With a too casual scan the book can be easily dismissed as a random sorting of journal entries. An aging writer enjoying a change of pace and place has been writing a bit to justify an honor as a visiting artist.Looking more closely, this narrative is artfully shaped, a true novel, which describes the late in life reckoning of the narrator with her past. Delightfully she is not captured by the past; this is not another rumination on Germany or Communism. It is primarily about encounters with friends and their adventures together. The past is faced and filtered and searched out through the quests and learning of the present. So many descriptions are bright, vivid and playful. The reader comes to care about a remarkable character who bears such a close resemblance to the author.'City of Angels', start the book, stay with it. It's a quiet classic.