Gestures Of Solace

everything changes everythingLauren Kessler has written a memoir drenched in sadness.First there is the piercing sadness of tremendous personal loss-in this case, of a husband to cancer and an adult daughter to a drug overdose. In the wrenching aftermath of these two family deaths, the author sets off on the Camino Francés ("French Way" in Spanish), an ancient, 500-mile pilgrimage that begins in southern France, traverses the Pyrenees and winds across the top of northern Spain to terminate, as do all Europe's camino routes, at the Roman Catholic cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain.The course of Ms. Kessler's journey serves as the framework for "Everything Changes Everything." In the book, subtitled "Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk," the author intersperses dispatches from her trip with harrowing personal reflections on marriage, motherhood and the self. She tells of her husband's health problems and of her pain as the youngest of her three children succumbs to addiction.There is a second, diffuse-seemingly unintentional-sadness revealed by the book that is something closer to cultural or civilizational loss. Ms. Kessler, whose previous books include "My Teenage Werewolf" (2010) and "Free" (2022), belongs to that distinctly modern cohort of Westerners who partake in a wide array of ethnic and devotional practices while belonging wholly to none. Throughout the book she displays the fundamental bewilderment of the secular postmodernist contending with huge life events while cut off from the consolations of any one tradition. Those anchored in religion or heritage may find guidance in old customs, but the author and her family, like so many others, appear to have only shallow connections to disparate, disconnected notions.

Go Unlimited with Magzter GOLD

Gestures Of Solace