A poignant, ultimately uplifting travel narrative that ends too quickly.
In this memoir, a retired veterinarian and cardiovascular researcher takes to the highways and back roads of the West Coast with his dog, seeking solace and purpose.
After almost 53 years of marriage, Gross (Man Hunt, 2012, etc.) faced the death of the only woman he ever loved. How would he find a path through his now-solitary remaining years? Enter Charlize, a German shepherd, who suffered her own traumas before Gross adopted her from a rescue center. Through steady companionship, they forged a bond that would lead them both to recovery. Gross bought a 2012 Dodge Ram 1500 (“Old Blue”) and a camping trailer (the “Frog”) and with Charlize riding shotgun, he hit the road. Inspired by his literary hero, John Steinbeck (the author of the 1962 bestseller Travels with Charley), Gross wrote a steady stream of blog posts detailing his journeys up and down the coast, through the Southwest, and up to the fly-fishing rivers of Montana. This book represents the collected bloggings of a good year’s worth of extended road trips. It’s part travelogue, part personal musing, with an occasional sprinkling of history and a dash of self-deprecating humor, all of which makes it most enjoyable for readers to tag along. Gross effectively depicts his restlessness—how he logged an extraordinary number of hours behind the wheel each day, never staying more than a night at each stop, except when visiting with old friends or family. He was up at 5 or 6 each morning, when he felt a cold dog nose pressed against his face, and he and Charlize were on the road before 8, usually pulling into a campground around 4 in the afternoon. In between were frequent stops to admire whatever delightful displays nature laid out before them. Charlize appeared to find her own mission through these adventures: to protect and comfort her best friend and to introduce him to a variety of fellow travelers. When memories and sadness swept in, Gross writes, Charlize was there, snuggling under the author’s arm, letting him know he was not alone; in his usual taciturn style, the author says merely, “It worked.” Overall, Gross is an experienced, capable writer, and by the final page, readers will feel they know both man and dog.
A poignant, ultimately uplifting travel narrative that ends too quickly.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-1940598543
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Book Publishers Network
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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