What readers and reviewers are saying about
Long Journey Home: A Prague Love Story
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"Helen Notzl writes movingly, with verve, passion, and skill, about the heart in exile, the lifelong search for home. Her book is a searing exploration of what it means to love two countries, two cities, two languages, and two men."
- Beth Kaplan, writer, teacher of autobiographical writing at University of Toronto and Ryerson University, author of All My Loving: Coming of Age with Paul McCartney in Paris and True to Life: 50 Steps to Help You Tell Your Story. "Notzl is a keen observer, particularly of emotional realities. Her memoire is filled with rich detail and reads like a novel – a tense thriller that had me anxiously turning pages to find out what would happen next.
This is not a memoire for the faint-of-heart. Long Journey Home is both a frank love story and a searing indictment of oppression and bullying in all their forms – political, sexual, social, and relational. It is a celebration of independence of thought and life choices – and a call to risk the heart to live life to its fullest." [READ FULL REVIEW HERE] - Karen Alison, Author, Editor, Blogger "At first glance, Long Journey Home appears to be a love story, many love stories, in fact, in the lifetime of author Helen Notzl, successful therapist, entrepreneur, feminist, and cultural patron. Love may have been what Notzl was seeking in a succession of major and minor flames, but self was what she found....
Notzl is a good writer, a scene-setter, a detail describer, but it is her story that grips the reader and turns us all into cheer leaders, hoping against hope for a happy ending.... Discover this woman of courage who found it all and lived to write about it." [READ FULL REVIEW HERE] - Dawn MacDonald Deme, writer, filmmaker "Helen Notzl writes an exciting account of her actual life story..so exciting to read about her adventures in Europe. She fearlessly tackles a life long hunger for her family's roots by penetrating deep into the Czech country. Her questions need answers and Helen gets those answers in spite of scary Russian soldiers at every turn. Riding her little scooter into the heart of her homeland and meeting many new loves and friends, Helen kept going. I could not put this book down."
- Jane Lasko, Amazon Reviewer "I found this book fascinating and hard to put down - it kept me up nights until I finished it. It's a love story both about and in Prague, but it also reveals the complete insanity of the Communist regime, through the experiences of the author and her Czech friends. A very powerful story."
- Karen A., Amazon Reviewer |