Product Description

This delightful book collects Calvin Trillin's accounts of his trips to Europe with his wife, Alice, and their two daughters. In Taormina, Sicily, they cheerfully disagree with Mrs. Tweedie's 1904 assertion that the beautiful town "is being spoilt," and skip the Grand Tour in favor of swimming holes, table soccer, and taureaux piscine. In Paris, they spend a day on the Champs- Elysées comparing Freetime's "le Hitburger" to McDonald's Big Mac. In Spain, Trillin wonders whether he will run out of Spanish "the way someone might run out of flour or eggs." Filled with Trillin's characteristic humor, Travels with Alice is the perfect book for summer travelers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45250 in Books
• Published on: 1999-07-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.com Review
Calvin Trillin goes through life one step behind his appetite. He says he's just a Big Hungry Boy from the Midwest, but he's also one of the funniest American writers around, writing a palate pilgrimage through Europe and the Caribbean, where Trillin fantasizes of an Italian West Indies island of Santo Prosciutto "whose steep hills are green with garlic plants." Trillin gives free play to other obsessions (like taureaux piscine), but most of the travels are happily fueled by thoughts of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

From Publishers Weekly
The humorist explores Europe and the Caribbean with his family, commenting on the events, etiquette and food they encounter. "If he were a stand-up comedian, these essays would be called routines," PW stated. "The peripatetic, insatiably curious Trillin is invariably entertaining."
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Readers who know Trillin's work are justified in expecting from him something quite different from the ordinary travel book, and they will find it here. In this gathering of 15 recollections of holidays, many of which were written originally for periodicals such as The New Yorker , Trillin offers himself as essayist rather than descriptive writer, interpreter rather than guide. With him most of the time were his wife Alice and two daughters, and their experiences--renting a house in the south of France, shopping at the Central Market in Florence, and hanging around the small French town of Uzes--provide the themes of a readable, unexacting book of pleasant rambles and a multiplicity of small happenings and human stories. Those who like bright, inconsequential chatter, with many diverse scraps of information thrown in, will enjoy this book. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/89.
- A.J. Anderson, Graduate Sch. of Library & Information Science, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A travel-writing gem
This is a gem of the travel narrative genre. Yet it is found under the Humor category in the bookstore. It is wickedly funny. Trillin's enthusiam is a pleasure. The chapter called "Defying Mrs. Tweedie" is worth the price of the entire book. Typical of this book, the chapter is not only original and funny, it is a lyrical description of a travel destination, Taormina, with details of history, scenery, and food. I like Trillin's philosophy of travel, the leisurely approach. The book is full of inside jokes from chapter to chapter, like the I.W.I. (the imaginary Italian West Indies, where the food is superb) and his nickname for his wife Alice, "la principessa." (It improves the service in Italian hotels.) Nice insights on family travel, too. I finished the last chapter, turned the page hoping for another, and groaned when I realized the book was finished.

Trillin's best yet!
Trillin's light brand of humor is perfectly suited to his view of travelling with wife and children in tow. A European summer for the Trillin family consists of food (of course), swimming, and finding the best "babyfoot" -- that is, bar football. And how many authors do you know who get their kicks by yelling "tauraux piscine" out the open car window as the Provencal countryside whizzes by? Read it and enjoy.

Travels with Calvin
Calvin Trillin may want to sound exasperated when he talks about his travels with his wife Alice and his daughters.He can talk all he wants about dispelling the notion that an $800.00 per person customs limit does not mean his family each need to purchase that exact amount of goods before returning home. How McDonald's semingly smell the same though located half a world apart. He may want to sound gruff, but this collection of essays manage to convey his delight in discovering new cusines,comfortable places and kindly people. I suspect half the fun of traveling with Alice, is seeing how far you could push the seemingly intractable Calvin over the edge.