Customer Reviews

The Singular Pilgrim: Travels on Sacred Ground

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There are all sorts of pilgrims making their tours. Chaucer knew this, of course, and his crew is composed of all from the reverent to the venal. Some of his pilgrims, like the Wife of Bath, were journeying just for the fun of it, but none of his pilgrims were confessed skeptics, out to see what they could see and write a book about the experience. That is what Rosemary Mahoney has done in _The Singular Pilgrim: Travels on Sacred Ground_ (Houghton Mifflin), not just once but within six of the most celebrated pilgrimages, and not just Christian pilgrimages, but a Hindu one, too. She has a fine eye for detail, an attraction to odd people, and a smooth way of telling a story, so that the armchair pilgrim gets to go vicariously on these jaunts with little risk except perhaps laughing at people who ought to be solemn, and questioning the purpose of pilgrimages and of worship itself.

Every year in May, there is an Anglican National Pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Walsingham, an English village. The procession is attended not only by pilgrims, but by protesters. Methodists, Presbyterians, and others who think that the procession is too close to Catholicism shout down the parade and put up signs like "This procession & mass denies the Word of God which forbids it." Lourdes is very Catholic and very kitschy. Mahoney's first physically demanding pilgrimage was to the city of Santiago de Compostela in Spain via walking El Camino de Santiago, hundreds of miles across northern Spain. Mahoney's view of the pilgrims here, as she hobbles with crippling tendonitis, is the most cynical; as befits a "new" ancient route, the pilgrims on it are New-Agey secular seekers, taking the hike during some free months in between jobs, to find a spouse, to heal a karma, or to lose weight. Mahoney's Hindu pilgrimage was to Varanasi, the ancient city on the Ganges where the very best cremations happen and where reverent Hindus go to bathe in the fetid waters. In the Holy Land, she is amused by how different churches insist that they own, say, the authentic place where the water-into-wine miracle. The struggle for authenticity has manifested itself in different religions or different branches of one religion trying to claim possession of particular sacred sites, and Mahoney notes, "Everyone was fighting to own a piece of the man who lived for peace and said, _Own nothing_." The final pilgrimage is to Saint Patrick's Purgatory on Station Island in the middle of Lough Derg, a rigorous pilgrimage including sleep deprivation, cold, midges, and mind-numbing recitations of rigid prayers, perhaps in anticipation of purgatory's entertainments.

Mahoney is a wonderful guide to these strange locales, practices, and people. She examines her own beliefs throughout, and contrasts them with those of her mother, a staunch Catholic. Conversations with her mother are remembered frequently throughout the book. There is serious introspection here, and serious inquiry into a form of human activity that has many participants, but she has conducted the research with irrepressible humor. At the end of the Camino trip, she reflects that although she was still unsure why she had walked all that way, "... I felt I had accomplished something strange and monumental." Yes, and that can be said of her book as well.

This writer has put a voice to all the questions, doubts, and uncertainties of which my belief system is composed. Her honesty about herself, her reactions to the many pilgrims she has met in her travels, her adventurousness and acceptance of differences reflect my own yearnings for what I should have done. I was thrilled by her 0bservations and revelations on each journey, but I was overwhelmed by her journal of her time in Varanesi. Her immersion into the life of this place, without "going native", her ability to not be revolted by the seeming desparation of the life around her,her quiet strength and assurance are excitng and moving and inspiring. The two young boys who become her guides and friends are extremely moving. She and they give what feels to be the truest account of the nature of faith that I have read. The myriad questions that all seekers have are not answered or resolved, but they are illuminated in such a way that those who share them may feel affirmed in the knowledge that it is the search and the questions which are important. Everyone's answers will be different, which is as it should be in the examination of such universal questions. This book is a treasure.

I was afraid this book was going to be very pious and all about religion. But it's one of the most entertaining and exciting things I've read in a long time. Mahoney is a very funny writer, with kind of a deadpan, wry sense of humor and really nice take on life and human relationships. She is very brave and adventurous, rowing a boat across the sea of galilee all by herself, walking 500 miles across spain on the Camino de Santiago, and spending three days on St, Patrick's purgatory in Ireland praying and fasting while barefoot the whole time. I think what I loved most about this book was the way the writer portrays the people she meets. It's very vivid and clear. You almost feel like you're right there beside her. The scene where she takes the holy bath at Lourdes in France is really funny, and a lot of what happens to her in India is a riot. Even though the writer is on a search of pilgrimages, she is always a little bit skeptical, which adds to the humor of the book. But most of all you can tell that she cares about people and wants to find out about their lives and why they are on these pilgrimages just as much as she wants to find out about her own spirituality. I learned a lot about the history of religious places that I didn't know before from reading this book. I really didn't want it to end because it was so fun to read.

I never purchase books, and I've bought three copies of the Singular Pilgrim to give away to friends. Yup, it is that good. Not only does Ms. Mahoney achieve the rare state of sublime travel writing in which you feel that you are with her as a fellow pilgrim, but she manages to add little surprizes within several of her adventures that add extra insight. In addition, she struggles with her Catholic background in a very clear-eyed way without indulging in self-pity or excessive anger.

I agree with a fellow reviewer that the chapter on the journey to Varanesi was especially moving.

I think Rosemary Mahoney is second only to Colin Thubron in travel writing, and I've read dozens of travel books. My only regret is that she did not visit a Buddhist country, where I believe she might have had a more spiritually satisfying experience.

Many thanks Ms. Mahoney!

Carl Strasen

This is a fantastic book - entertaining, honest and beautifully written. The essays are thoughtful and informative, and amusing enough to keep me up late several nights in a row. The essay about Mahoney's experience in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges, is one of the best pieces of nonfiction I've ever read. Highly, highly recommended.

Rosemary Mahoney is, I think, one of the best travel writers around. Nothing can beat her "Whoredom in Kimmage," in fact, for writing about a place by a person not from that place. This book is more about spiritual traveling, though, and I sense that Mahoney was on more alien ground. It's just as beautifully written, but not always as insightful as one wants. But that doesn't detract from the experience of reading it, which will leave you feeling as if you have been on an amazing pilgrimage of your own.

An engaging mix of detail. When she swipes the umbrella on her first day out on the road to Santiago, I was hooked. WALK to your nearest bookstore for a copy.

I've read two other books by this writer that I loved and so Im not surprised that this one was just as captivating. It's hard to put into words what it is about Mahoneys writing that keeps you reading. It's something to do with how alive she is, how attuned she is to people, how she notices absolutely everything that's of any importance. And her way of describing the world is completely original so that when you read her you think, "oh, yeah, that's right it IS like that," though you never thought of it yourself that way. She is obviously very intelligent and well-read and well0educated, but that's not what really stands out in her writing. It's the people she meets and how she responds to them that you will love in this book. She's like a person who is open to all other people. And some of it is so damn funny, how she captures people's personalities. My favorite chapter in this book was VARANASI, mainly because her portrait of the little Indian boy is so moving. I think what makes her books so interesting is her ability to talk to people. They all tell her things that you get the feeling they wouldn't tell another person. Anybody who is looking for a real spritual revelation will be disapponted by this book,because that's not realy what it's about. In fact, Mahony is kind of a skeptical pilgrim who isn' really sure whether she believes in god. But it's obvious she believes in people and that's why this book is worth reading.

As a travel writer, Rosemary Mahoney is engaging and observant. She has a keen eye for the absurd, and unlike, say, Paul Thereau, she presents the people she encounters in a sympathetic or at least relatively non-partisan light. I found her book compulsively readable and enjoyable.

As a pilgrim, however, I found her disappointing. This book lacks the extra dimension that Kathleen Norris's "Cloister Walk" or Peter Matthiessen's "The Snow Leopard" have, where the author is sincerely searching and is changed by that search. Instead, Mahoney seems to do what she accuses herself of doing early on in the book -- she takes out religious issues to play with them a bit and then tucks them away again. I very much felt she was playing at being a pilgrim here, more to write an entertaining book than anything else. On that level, she succeeds very well.

The reader joins her as a tourist, then, and as an observer of others' walks of faith rather than a participant. She does a marvelous job recreating some very interesting places and the colorful characters she encounters. Her most memorable--even haunting--character is the young man who becomes her guide in Varanasi; in the perceptively written passages involving him, Mahoney shines.

After reading Rosemary Mahoney's latest book "Down The Nile; Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff" I have read all of her other four books and just want to say that as a serious reader I'm hooked. I think what's most interesting about this writer is not just her interesting language or her real writing talent but her curiosity and her interest in other people. It's pretty rare that you find a writer who could write in an intersting way about just anything at all. This is one such writer. It almost doesn't matter what she's writing about; it's her sensibility and her style and her humor that will draw you in deep. There's something very new and fresh in the way Mahoney writes. I'm a reader who's always lookiing for something new. I haven't had half enough of this writer yet!