Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart

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Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Chicago Travel Books

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart
Price: $13.57

Features

Paperback: 400 pages

Publisher: Ecw Press September 1, 2002

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1550225480

ISBN-13: 978-1550225488

Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds

Reader Reviews
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. Comments (2) | Permalink | (Report this)

Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road
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Updated on 8-25-2008.