Customer Reviews

Ghost Rider

5 star:		(115)
4 star:		(57)
3 star:		(40)
2 star:		(22)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

I find it interesting and sad how many people read this book looking for a story and insight about RUSH. I personally was deeply saddened after the Test for Echo tour to have heard about Neil's tragic losses, then just recently in December of 2002, a week before Christmas, I lost my 32 year old wife to cancer, and immediately have been thrust into a fraternity that nobody should have to join.

A friend was kind enough to give me the book as a gift, and what a profound gift it was. As a lifelong fan of RUSH, Neil, and being a drummer myself, I took that book everywhere with me...it almost became my security. On planes, in my car, etc...until I finally forced myself to read the book closely.

I feel much closer to Neil and certainly identify with his emotions, his feelings of anger, frustration, self-loathing, his "little baby soul" and everything else. Sure, the book delves too deep into certain things that may come across as "WHO CARES" to the reader, but that's the way grief is. You try to fill as much time with WHO CARES so you don't just sit around and cry and be miserable. I know, because I'm there RIGHT NOW.

At this point, I'm almost feeling an additional loss from having finished the book. I agree that there was unfinished business in this book, but I can't help but feel happy for the guy for getting to the point of moving on. That was bittersweet reading for me and quite hard.

Thanks Neil, for sharing your moving story, and making this reader feel and understand your pain, and through that process, anticipate and justify the feelings that I currently am going through. Well done.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit to being a long-time Rush fan, which by extension makes me a long-time fan of Neil Peart, the author of this work and drummer and lyricist for Rush. I had been aware of the tragedies that he and his family had experienced, and knew that it was the reason behind the several-year gap between albums (Test for Echo released in 1996. Rush's next album, Vapor Trails, would not release until 2002.). However, I didn't know the story of what brought Neil back to Rush, and thus Rush back to the world until I picked up this book at a concert in July of 2002.

When Neil Peart lost his daughter to a traffic accident in the fall of 1997, and his wife to cancer (though, really, he knew it was a broken heart that took his wife), he was an empty man, a man with no reason to live, and little desire to do so. To save himself from the loneliness and the emptiness of a life alone, Peart took to the roads on his motorcycle on a journey that would cover Canada, much of the western United States, and parts of Central America. As he wrote:

"My little baby soul was not a happy infant, of course, with much to complain about, but as every parent learns, a restless baby often calms down if you take it for a ride. I had learned my squalling spirit could be soothed the same way, by motion, and so I had decided to set off on this journey into the unknown. Take my little baby soul for a ride."

This book is a compelling combination of travelogue, literary journal, sarcastic wit, and honest soul- searching. It provides a number of insights to a complex and intriguing man, one who would be interesting even without his fame. His humor, his pain, his reflections, his irritation, his impatience, his fear... All of it presented for the world to see, and to learn from.

I recommend this book not only to Rush fans, but to anyone interested in seeing how someone survives the losses Peart experienced and emerges a whole person on the other side.

I recently picked up a copy of this book at a Rush concert. Partly, I was curious to see how well Neil could do as an author. Partly there was a karma connection: I lost my brother to cancer about ten years ago, and had gotten through it with the help of Rush's music, so I wanted to know how such a painful loss affected the man who wrote the lyrics to "Bravado".

Not surprisingly, Peart's writing on the page-to-page level is witty, literate, and frank. As a travelogue, Ghost Rider is fairly interesting, peppered with details about the various locales he visits and the people who put them on the map, and pithy observations about the local culture. I'm sure he'd do well as a writer at a travel magazine (but being in a successful rock band probably pays better).

As an account of an emotional journey, though, Ghost Rider feels like a journal that was transfered into book form without benefit of a good editing job. It seems like I spent as much time reading about what Neil ate for dinner, what repairs he made to his bike, what (briefly described) old friend he met, etc., than about the process of coming to grips with grief. Understandable that he preferred dealing with day-to-day details to take his mind off the hurt while on the road, but as a final narrative, it gets a bit tedious to the reader who doesn't have much emotional connection to these things, at least not as they're told. Though he clearly misses his wife and daughter, he doesn't say much about them, which makes it hard to empathize with his breakdowns along the way. Flashes into the struggle of the soul are there, but they often get deflected into self-conscious banter which likewise gets a little old. For example, reading about a middle-aged rock drummer chasing after squirrels with a water gun has potential to be comical in an existential way, but Neil manages to deflate the moment by trying to make it sound WITTY. Also, his occasional jabs at fat people, trailer trash, and oblivious Americans left a bad taste -- taking cheap shots at easy targets is not moving writing. He was mostly above that in song lyrics. All of us get lost in the darkness, he said at one point, so he should know better than to write as if he were the only one ever so badly hurt.

Rush fans looking for a more personal connection to their favorite band will probably be disappointed (for one thing, Rush is mentioned mainly only incidentally). You certainly get some insight into the workings of the man's mind and the origins of various song lyrics (which preface each chapter), but the delivery of the book is so workmanlike, it's hard to feel a lot of emotional weight from his experience (though it's obviously there). Ghost Rider really could have a been a fascinating, instead of merely interesting read, if only Neil had taken the time to trim down the breadth and expand on the depth. I'd imagine he wrapped up the book in a hurry to work on the latest Rush CD, Vapor Trails, which, on the whole, is a lot more moving (listen to the SONG Ghost Rider).

Overall, I admire that Mr. Peart drove himself to write this, and I think he's got a good book or two in him (or a slew of articles), if he focuses better on reaching out to the reader, but for now he shouldn't quit the day job! (Please, no!) So, anyone thinking about buying Ghost Rider should carefully read the reviews here and make up his or her own mind.

(Update 2011: added some new thoughts in the comments section)

Neil Peart suffered a tremendous loss, a double-whammy of daughter (car accident) and wife (cancer) in the space of a year. Being an amazingly fortunate, well-to-do fellow, he retreated to his house by the lake for a bit before deciding, in the depths of his despair, to climb aboard his... BMW motorcycle and spend handsome sums of time and money tooling around Canada, the United States and Mexico trying to let time do its healing. Mr. Peart doesn't seem to grasp at any point that his resources allow him many more options than almost anyone alive, although a friend points out in a letter to him that suffering that kind of loss and being poor would be a real bummer. Instead of being a nomadic self-therapist, he would take a week's unpaid bereavement leave and then trudge back to work on Monday morning. That's how the fat, uncultured Americans Neil despises have to deal with their own personal losses. Or maybe how they're going to buy a one hundred dollar Rush ticket to see their favorite band in concert when they can't pay the rent, car payment and power bill all in the same month.

I also am surprised at Mr. Peart's mental relationship with his fans. At one point in the book, he sits at a bar, drinking a scotch that the money of his fans put into his hand, hoping not to be recognized by one of them. No mention at all is made of the outpouring of sympathy that Rush fans expressed for Neil's twin losses. If he heard about it at all, he must have felt that it was insignificant, dismissing the voluminous, one-sided correspondence from them with barely a thought. There seems to be no glimmer in him of the changes wrought in the world due to the career he has abandoned during the time period covered by this book. Mr Peart has changed lives for the better and had a profound influence on the toughts and lives of many a person, but instead of pride, he only wishes to hide from it. This cannot be chalked up to his grief, as it seems to be an attitude carried over from his happier days. Puzzling.

While I enjoyed reading about the travels themselves, often referring to an atlas to trace the route of the self-proclaimed Ghost Rider, I found myself unable to empathize continuously with the man doing the riding. On one page I would identify with his observations or dry humor utterly, then on the next be baffled by this headstrong, self-absorbed fellow.

Rush, while an outstanding band, have never been the type to "give back" to their fans, and after reading this book, one can gain insight into at least 1/3 of that attitude. Yet, why was this book written in the first place, if not for anonymous people to share in the experience? Is the author interested only in sending out a message in a bottle? A baffling conundrum that ultimately is more interesting than the book itself.

Having said all that, I was unprepared for the emotional reaction I had to the last few pages. I cried tears of joy that this bitter, fragile creature had allowed himself to rejoin the mainstream of human experience as symbolized by his relationship with his new wife, Carrie. I wish this complex, frustrating man the best, although he wouldn't care even if he knew I said that.

GHOST RIDER is written by Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the legendary hard rock music trio Rush. In 1997-98, Peart suffered a double tragedy when his daughter and wife died within ten months of each other. Left suddenly alone, Peart hit the road for fourteen months to escape his grief, and his travels are chronicled here.

Anyone wishing for profound emotional empathy for Peart will not find many nuggets here. The majority of this book is just a travelogue by a man who is seeking to put his tragedies on the road behind him ... and nothing more.

I was very disappointed in the first half of the book, initially because it took less than ten pages for Peart to reduce the lives of his wife and daughter to what is essentially a prologue. Then, when Peart hits the road, his thoughts and efforts are enveloped by his travels, which he shares in prodigious detail. He documents page after page of flora and fauna, road and riding conditions, sights and situations, meals, books and accommodations, only to include perhaps a single, glib sentence on his mental state, such as, "...suddenly I was in tears. One step forward, one step back." I became increasingly frustrated and annoyed because he cared more about describing his travels than communicating his grief, and I felt he never justified this discrepancy.

If this had been written purely as a travelogue, I may have rated this higher, and it might be enjoyable to follow along his path with a road atlas and be satisfied with the journey. Peart puts in a lot of miles and goes to interesting places that typical travel books never go. But even this work is harmed by his wide antisocial streak, his ungracious celebrity, and a tangible disdain for Americans.

By the halfway point, I had already had enough of Peart's weighty travel journal and the dearth of emotional honesty, and I had to force myself to finish the book. I had reached a much greater understanding of Peart's affection for his jailed friend Brutus than for his own family, and I found that to be the book's saddest reality of all. I really wanted to care about his plight, but he wasn't giving me an excuse to. He was coming across quite unsympathetically, and that's an enormous feat considering the gravity of the subject matter.

Fortunately, the book's second half was an improvement, but by then I just wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. Ironically, his journey and healing improve noticeably whenever he's NOT on the road. In the cabin by the lake, he must confront the memories of his wife and daughter honestly and directly, and he is actually more willing to share these situations with the reader. It is in these moments that Neil Peart finally comes across with humanity, and we see him surrounded by his former life, as the widower, and as the father who had to bury his child.

But these moments are all too fleeting. His insecurities put him on the road twice more in the second half, mostly shared through his neverending letters to Brutus. I skimmed paragraphs, places became indistinct, and I just grew weary of traveling with him. I was tired of his letter writing style, his forced levity, and the callousness with which he regards Gabrielle (whom he dated briefly) as "that woman," without rhyme or reason. GHOST RIDER is three quarters travel journal and maybe one quarter emotional insight, but it fails to find a synergy of the physical (the journey) and the spiritual (the healing).

In the end, Peart's travels come to a screeching halt with his hastily-written equivalent of "...and I lived happily ever after." As he completed his journey, any happiness I might have had for him was tempered by the relief I felt, knowing that my reading journey was finally at an end.

GHOST RIDER was my first exposure to Mr. Peart's books, but unless he writes a Rush biography, it will also be my last. Two and a half stars.

While I feel badly for Neil's tragic losses, the `woe is me' tone of this book gets weary quick. This is compounded by Neil's diffident and disdainful attitude toward just about everything and everybody he encounters. I had to keep reminding myself that the author had lost his daughter and common-law wife within months of each other otherwise I couldn't feel much empathy for him.

The writing style reminds of someone who loves the mechanics of writing but has difficulty with the soul of writing. Reading this book was an empty experience. I didn't feel like I shared or learned much of anything when I finished. When Neil does touch on an emotional issue, he tends to sum it up with "then I cried" and leave the reader to figure out the rest.

Curiously, Neil claims "you give good, you get good" yet he spends much of his time fraternizing with his pen pal drug-dealer, regarding most people he meets with disgust and generally acting like a self-indulgent jerk. Maybe his karma isn't as pure as he imagines.

Still, it could have been a decent read with some editorial help. A better introduction to Jackie and Selena, less love letters to Brutus and for god's sake, knock down the emotional walls before you sit down to write. Otherwise, why bother?

I was really prepared to be as moved by Ghost Rider as I had been by "The Masked Rider" and by Peart's lyrics over these many years. But in the end I did something I almost never do - I put the book down without finishing it.

First, I feel I need to come to Peart's defense, having read a number of the existing reviews of this book. Yes, Neil comes across as arrogant, boorish, and trite. His observations reveal an elitism that is a strange combination of being Canadian, brilliant, and independently wealthy. His disdain for Americans fills the chapters of his travels in the US. It's particularly interesting to see how enraptured he is by getting glimpses of "the real Mexico" and he is ebulliant in his praise of the strength of Mexican culture. On the other hand, it is in Mexico that he encounters real fear. This being said, however, Mr. Peart is worthy of respect for his unflinching honesty. Most of us, given the opportunity to write a book about our lives, would never dream of revealing the depths of our personalities to the extent that Mr. Peart does, precisely becuase most of us carry the same prejudices and cultural biases that pervade Ghost Rider.

And, of course, the adventures and cultural observation are the backdrop for Peart's real story, the effort to find a way to live after the tragedies that beset him. Now, I admire Peart's rationalist philosophy, while pitying him for suffering under its deficiencies. But it is a frustrating experience to read his efforts to cope.

This is one of the great flaws of the book. Peart never fully communicates the depths of his loss (how could he?). But then he charges off on his motorcycle, taking the reader along. We are distracted when he is distracted, and reminded when he is reminded. But lacking the ballast of the emotional tragedy (again, never successfully related), it is hard to appreciate any healing he is experiencing.

Rather, the real catharsis seems to be more related to the travails of his biker buddy, jailed for drug smuggling about 1/3 of the way through the book. It is almost as if having a further loss, but one that is "secondhand", helps him get his bearings and moves his focus away from the past to the present.

But this event is also the bane of the story, for Peart begins to tell his story through his letters to his jailed friend, and although he does his best to let us in on the inside jokes, they, of course, are always inside jokes. After Peart's return from Mexico, the flood of letters becomes insufferable and the book becomes virtually unreadable. More trenchant souls than I have pushed on through to the end, and report a sudden re-emergence of "Neil Peart" from his cocoon of sorrow. But I lack the patience.

I read the book out of a feeling of fate. I lost my husband on 5/26/2002, and then my son on 9/19/2003. I recall someone mentioning to me that I should read this book about healing after the loss of loved ones. I can't recall even who mentioned it, but I ran across it in a used book store and felt there must have been some reason for the coincidence. I have to tell you that my heart was not healed by Mr. Peart's journaling of his travels. I could truly feel his pain at times, but most of us do not have the luxury of jumping on our motorcycle and riding as he did (yes, I do ride.) We have to earn a living, taking our little baby broken heart everywhere we go. That was the part of the book about which I truly could relate, and the analogy I will hold on to. I'm happy he was able to find someone so comforting in such a short time to soothe his broken heart, but I think that is not reality for most of us. In truth, the pain remains and there is no knight in shining armour waiting in the wings to make those memories a distant past. The ghost rider is still by my side every minute, reminding me of what I no longer have, and making me question my purpose day by day. I go on hoping that one day I will find that answer. In the meantime, I don't drink away the pain or try to mask it. I work and grieve and get by, just like all the others who lose those they cherish most.

As a fan of Rush and Neil Peart for 20+ years, I was hoping this book would reveal more about Neil's human side and the tragedies he faced and overcame. It did, but not the way I expected. I was about 100 pages in when I realized the book is written for Neil himself, not for the reader. The author often seems not to know or care that a reader exists and wants to understand and empathize with his journey. He logs hundreds of pages of detail of his aimless wanderings, often interspersed with his own feelings of grief, but the few real insights are fragmented without any real coherence. In fact, some of them are probably unintentional; he seems as unaware of his own disdain towards most other people he meets, as he is of the reader himself. This becomes painfully obvious in the "Letters to Brutus" section, pages upon pages of correspondence that, while surely significant to Neil and his close friends, are mostly fragmented and irrelevant to anyone else. After 450 pages of material, through which we desperately want Neil to overcome his pain, the story of his recovery is tacked on in literally a single sentence, followed by 6 pages of epilogue.

My sense is that this book was written not for the reader, but for Neil to bring closure to his own grieving process, which is understandable given the terrible tragedies that the author experienced. The reader should approach it in that context, understanding that the process of grief necessarily makes a person very focused on the self to the exclusion of almost all else.

I'd recommend the book only to dedicated fans of Neil's work, with the caveat that this particular work is really written for Neil himself. All the band members have consistently said they feel they owe their followers their best possible performance in exchange for the CD price or ticket charge; for the $20 price of this book, this is the first work I've seen by any of them that falls far short of that standard.

Knowing that Neil Peart is insightful and so good with the written word, I was expecting a lot of tidbits and profound insights into life and how he was dealing with the tragic deaths of his daughter and wife.

For many parts of this book, I did get that but quite frankly, the letters to Brutus and others - I could have done without. They were just babbling about what he did today and didn't bring much insight. Having been out of North America for ten years, I did appreciate the description of what it's like to live and travel in Canada again -

I felt that the ending was a little abrupt - while he had alluded to getting back to himself, he didn't really go into that process. His introduction to Carrie was only in the last few pages from "hey I'm dating this woman" to "hey we're getting married in California" - wot?!

I guess I may have had the wrong expectations for this book which is of no fault of the author. I was expecting to learn more about the thinking of an obviously brilliant lyricist and drummer...what I got was more random thoughts and a stream of consciousness