text: I actually know where Trieste was before I read this book.  Unfortunately I have never visited the city.  I wanted to read this travel book about this famous city, but after a few chapters, I wondered where the book was going to.  After the final chapter, I still do not know what the author's intentions was with this book.  Perhaps I don't read too many travel books.  Obviously the city means a lot to the author, but she did not express it clearly in her writing.  I was scratching my head at the end, and wondering what I read.
  I learned a little about the city, but not in relation to the amount of time I spent reading this short book.  The city of James Joyce and Maximillian.  The imperial port of the Austo-Hungarian Empire.  The meeting point of Slav, German, and Latin Empires.  One of the ending points of the Iron Curtain.  This city breeds interest and yet the author took us on a round about journal that confuses the reader.  I am sure the author's other books are good, her last one was not the greatest. 
  