jtth's review
4.0
Short, tight and affecting prose pace a journey through Europe a year after WWII. Beautiful travel writing; makes me want to go on a journey.
georgiaonyrmnd's review
4.0
A perfect winter read. Paula Fox writes about her experiences traveling abroad in Europe as an early twentysomething journalist with haunting brevity as she recounts her experiences among the postwar cities of London, Paris and Warsaw. Fox somehow avoids the sentimental even in her most personal experiences. Her short essays reflect the devastation wrecked on the people and places of Europe. A great short read that could be finished in one sitting or a couple of metro rides in my case
brucefarrar's review
4.0
Wanting to escape life in New York, where she’d grown up, Fox saves up her earnings from waiting table and books a bargain passage to post-war London in 1946. She gets a job as a stringer from a start-up news service and gets dispatched briefly to Paris, and then to Poland during the coldest European winter in twenty years. In Warsaw she meets Mrs. Grassner, a woman from “a Jewish woman’s organization in the Midwest.” Fox is there to cover the human interest stories surrounding the new Parliament. Grassner tells her she is there to help Jews escape to British Palestine. “Didn’t I know, she was asking, that the Poles and the worst anti-Semites in Europe? Had I imagined that Hitler had instructed them how to kill Jews?”
Clearly all the demons of the war have not been exorcised with the allied victory. This is reinforced by Fox’s next destination: Spain where the repressive regime of General Franco and the fascists still rule. She’s visiting her great-uncle in Barcelona. Tío Antonio had been turned in to the secret police by a visiting relative for writing to his sister in Long Island. In the letter he wishes that Spain might be liberated from the fascists as was the rest of Europe. He been taken into custody and beaten for this treasonable act.
Fox’ style is clear and direct; her witness is powerful.
Clearly all the demons of the war have not been exorcised with the allied victory. This is reinforced by Fox’s next destination: Spain where the repressive regime of General Franco and the fascists still rule. She’s visiting her great-uncle in Barcelona. Tío Antonio had been turned in to the secret police by a visiting relative for writing to his sister in Long Island. In the letter he wishes that Spain might be liberated from the fascists as was the rest of Europe. He been taken into custody and beaten for this treasonable act.
Fox’ style is clear and direct; her witness is powerful.
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