I approached this book with a song in my
heart, expecting an uplifting story of a pilgrimage, full of depth and interest.
The cover promises a tale of love, grief and spiritual renewal on the Camino of
Santiago.  Here I hesitate, being for a moment, quite lost for words.  If you
will imagine, for a moment, a room full of tokens from a bazaar — imitation
warrior shield, carpet pinned to the wall.  A poster of Fidel Castro and
another urging the reader to fight for peace. The sort of room, common to
teenage failures in the real world and the despair of parents, who have spent
hard earned money only to find that their offspring are going through that
period when they join marches, mix with dope smoking, semi-illiterate
unemployable long haired youths with pigtails and some face stubble. 

Someone must support Kerry Egan for she
surely cannot earn enough to lead a reasonable life, by attempting to write.  Let
me quote: "Walking is falling. Gravity is involved. Putting one foot in
front of the other stops one falling down. Walking is like praying."

Twisting her hair because she is
stressed, takes two pages of drivel. Instead of a bag, which is too difficult
to cope with, she wants to buy a donkey.  Relics are old bits of wood and
bones, which could be meaningless or spiritual.  Slugs eating a segment of an
orange takes enough explaining to render the reader feeling desperate.  Breathing
fills a deep yearning of self and of one’s own body.  The sun is everywhere.
She does like sun.  But maps sucked.  Pizza Hut is all she wants. There is a
shed at home that is too small for a car so it houses a lawn mower.

Her father is a vicious ignorant drunk
with underwear that hangs down and his dentures out.  He is stained with blood.
Yet Egan does not say enough to explain why she feels she must tell the readers
all this.

If you think this review is disjointed
you want to try and read 230 rambling pages by an aspiring writer whose work
has no form, no plot, and no interest. How she managed to get it published is a
mystery. Egan is trying to be too clever. The fact that she has moved from Long
Island to Iowa with her travel companion who is now her husband, tells its own
story. This is not a tale about a pilgrimage but of mistaken belief that the
author has talent as a purveyor of words in any form.

© 2006 Wyndham Perring

Wyndham Perring lives in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK.

Categories: Memoirs