Customer Reviews

Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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An essential read for anyone who is struggling with grief or regrets, examining religion's place in his or her life, or merely fantasizing about running away to shake things up. With compelling historical and theological background to set the stage for her pilgrimage, the author is refreshingly honest about exposing her own flaws and struggles. Her boyfriend/traveling partner provides comic relief and keeps her from taking herself too seriously as he keeps her on track. I'm buying a few extra copies as gifts for friends so they can understand when I say, "That's exactly how I feel sometimes."

A funny, moving memoir that made me laugh but also made me think about my relationship with God. A must read.

Whether you're reading this on a train or on your back porch during a snow storm, be prepared for an extraodinary journey through northern Spain in the summer. For those of you planning to travel the Camino, Egan describes with vivid detail the scenary(especially the wheat), the people, and everything you'd want to know that they don't tell you in a guide book. It is of course much more than a physical journey, and as you travel with Egan it is as though you are taking a trip through yourself, only this time with a witty, insightful, and adventurous tour guide who doesn't stick to the path.

Cheers to the honesty of the author. She shares her feelings and behaviors with all their warts -- so that I got frustrated with her frustration. I was so sad the Meseta was depressing to her and that she couldn't sense the beauty of the place. Also sad that she so took for granted her companion. Somehow, though, it all made sense by the end (no spoiler here), which made it a worthwhile read. A true happy ending! What makes the book rewarding ultimately is her very honesty. I'm glad she didn't hide her feelings, but just wish she'd been a little more even-tempered as a author/guide/companion as I "walked" the Camino with her.

At the start, Fumbling reminded me a bit of the travel adventures of Bill Bryson, complete with hilarious situations, interesting factual details, and commentary on the weird and wonderful discovered along the way as Egan travels the Camino trail through Spain. But the travelogue quickly yields to the startlingly honest commentary of a diary as Egan shares with us, bit by bit, the at times shocking events that brought her to her crisis of faith. Egan lightens up the more serious discussions of prayer and faith with humerous anecdotes and a Bridget Jones-esque sense of self-deprivation. This odd combination is tied together by Egan's wonderfully direct and accessible writing style. This soul-baring story will challenge the reader to self-examination while compelling you to keep turning the pages.

No table of contents, no index, I just had to dive in, but by the end of the first page the imagery of the words had captured me. An excerpt from the second paragraph:

"I knelt in the back of the church, my forehead on the top lip of the smooth, varnished pew in front of me. The wood was hard against my forehead, . . . .I'd been crying for a long time . . . ."

This is a story of pilgrimage, grieving and transformation, but not a daily journal. There are thirty one numbered episodes, sometimes causing a page break, sometimes just a break in the middle of the page. At a higher level the book is organized into parts, starting with Part 1 Fumbling, Part 2 Walking . . . and so on.

The episodes are a series of vignettes of the Camino experience. They are roughly sequential, but any one of them could stand alone as an essay, for example in a newspaper column. They all will bring back memories and tug the heart of anyone who has walked the Camino de Santiago.

This is a book you can read for pleasure, but certainly one you will want to read after making the journey.

Egan writes of her struggles with faith in the face of her father's death with a refreshing honesty and insight. Anyone who has lost a loved one will identify with the spiritual questions she faces and find hope in the way she comes to terms with her grief. With a wit and candor reminiscent of Anne Lamott, Egan describes experiences and characters that linger with the reader long after the book is closed, and delivers an engaging book that is part travelogue, part spiritual journey and altogether inspiring. A must read!

Rebeccasreads highly recommends FUMBLING as an outstanding account of the pilgrimage of a 25 year old divinity student carrying a heavy load of guilt, grief & self-loathing.

Salted in the stories of her trials on the trail, Kerry Egan offers the history of the pilgrimage from the French Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, giving us visions of a fable land, as well as how the journey cracked her open so that she could heal from her raw & unrecognized emotions.

Kerry Egan, back in 1999, was one angry woman. How Alex, her boyfriend, stays with her, is her compass when she's lost, bearing the brunt of her impressive rage & hopeless longing, is just as exciting as how she stumbles across the land upon which others have trod for thousands of years.

If pilgrimages fascinate you, then FUMBLING offers both the reason & the value of taking that first step on the journey to healing.

For my recent compilation of pilgrimage quotations ("Ultreia! Onward! Progress of the Pilgrim") I read all 40 or so contemporary English journal accounts available about the various routes. Egan's is clearly within the first grouping of 8 or so best such books (i.e. largely those written by established authors and/or academics). Coming from Harvard's Div School just a few hundred meters from where I work, Egan's book is really one of the handful of best ones that attempts to break free (somewhat successfully here) of the linear (and often dead boring) narratives that characterize many such pilgrimage accounts, as she engages in the sort of inner pilgrimage that makes such journeys worthwhile. And she can certainly pen prose; i.e. I used 11 very nice quotations of hers in the review volume Ultreia! Onward!.

Fumbling is the best book I have read this year. It provides a personal perspective into Ms. Egan's pilgrimage while offering insight into the history and psychology of engaging on a pilgrimage.

The book is written is short chapters that make it easy to read in moments stolen from a hectic schedule. There were times when my eyes filled with tears and others when I laughed out loud while reading this book.

I think I'll read it again.