I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail by Gail D. Storey
222 pages
Published 2013
Read from March 5 to March 7
Rating: ★★ out of 5
If this had been a novel instead of my current obsession, a hiking narrative, I wouldn't have looked at it twice. A needy and codependent woman follows her standard-issue stoic doctor husband on his thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. While he refuses to use maps, ask for directions, or talk about his feelings for months at a time, she obsesses over whether he really loves her or wants her to be there. All the while Storey weaves in recollections of the various New Age and neo-Buddhist retreats and encounters she had as a bored rich wife looking for some kind of prepackaged meaning, and traces it all back to her issues with her mother, who shut her out emotionally after Storey dared to sleep with some men back when she was in her 20s. On top of everything, the dialogue isn't naturalistic by any definition; the "characters" state what Storey needs them to, in order to forward the "plot."
If this hadn't been a hiking narrative, I would have found nothing of interest here. I don't like tales of the privileged and prosperous desperately seeking after "meaning," and Storey is egregious about this, rarely going more than a page or two without going on at length about how the PCT was magically "changing" the two of them, and oozing her affluence and wealth on every page. Enough of this crap about learning how to love the world in some cosmic pseudo-mystic malarkey. Just talk about trail experiences already.
No comments:
Post a Comment