Have a(n Amster)Damn Good Time!

Everything is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour - Rachel Shukert

       Omaha-native Rachel Shukert has recently graduated  from college in New York and is an aspiring actress when she gets a non-speaking "male" part in an experimental play.  When the play is chosen to have a short run in Austria, Rachel gets a chance to return back to Europe.  When they don't stamp her passport on arrival, she takes this as a sign to try staying in Europe longer than originally expected.

       I first heard of Everything is Going to Be Great from Jamie at The Perpetual Page Turner's less than thrilled review and I'd likely agree with a lot of what she had already said.  This book is part travel-log, mostly memoir.  By "European Grand Tour" Shukert means more that she travels to just a few cities.  There's an almost prelude story of her on an earlier trip in Paris on Bastille Day, and she does spend time in Vienna, but the majority of the story happens when she calls up two friends and arranges to stay with them in Amsterdam.

       Shukert's narrative is at times very funny, but I wound up knowing waaaay more about her sex life than I thought I would (that apparently is the "overexposed" part of the tour/book), although that's not a bad thing and the stories are interesting and sometimes humorous.  Most of the book are small stories about observations she saw or people she met, which while that's part of what a memoir/travelog is supposed to be, there didn't feel like there was enough of a running narrative to tie the book together.  Yes, it was ok and made me laugh and cringe (see trying to get people to go to a comedy tour after they leave the Anne Frank House or the section on Zwarte Piet), but when I think of a grand tour, I don't think of essentially two cities and a prologue in third city.  I felt the book lacking a bit, but still good. 
      

Rating: 3 out of 5.