This is not it for me. As much as I wanted to like the book, the more I progressed, the more I didn’t want to read it anymore. To me, these are basically the memoirs of a well-off gay man, who gets burned out during COVID and despite it being a global pandemic and red travel zone (which means: stay the f***k home) travels from Canada to Spain to walk a sacred pilgrimage route. But apart from very deep soul searching, we read about spa days and mocking other people who are walking the same route. That’s not cute, Dennis…

Perhaps other people will enjoy the book more, but for me, this was not it.

I enjoyed Toward Beauty by Dennis Garnhum. I have read a few books about the Camino de Santiago and this book was a delight for me. Between descriptions of the landscape, the interactions with the other pilgrims and the personal transformation the author experienced, this was everything I want a book about the Camino to be: insightful, thought-provoking and beautifully descriptive.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC of this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. After the Pandemic reduces him to tears, a theatre director in Canada decides to hike the Camino del Norte in Spain. After just a few pages, you feel like you know Dennis, the author, well. He has a wonderful, friendly, and warm tone to his writing and does a terrific job of taking you on this pilgrimage with him. He struggles and resolves several old sources of hurt and meets kind and interesting people along the way.

This book is quite accessible to those interested in pilgrimages but who do not necessarily go to church or do not go on pilgrimage for spiritual reasons. The author is a lapsed Catholic, and he discusses what brought him to that point. I liked that he stayed in some nice places along his journey and didn't try to cross all the T's on the "rules" of this kind of pilgrimage. His journey was marvelously transformational, but not necessarily spiritual. It worked.

Highly recommended for thoughtful, insightful and interesting reading.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing an advanced copy of this book in exchange of a honest review.

This is probably one of the toughest review I made so far. I think if I were to give a title to the book myself, I'd go for "Pilgrimage to Santiago — rich wimp edition" or perhaps "Psychological inside of a person that tries hard to fit in instead of finding his own voice".
Now, it is hard to write a very objective review when you disliked much of what you read (and, believe me, I am pretty amazed by the fact I pushed myself to the end) but I'll try and be as impartial as I can possibly be.

The book is presented like an autobiography, Dennis', starting with a moment of crisis in his life which brings him to wear the shoes of a pilgrim and walk the path to Santiago de Compostela, during which journey he goes through some of the events that inevitably signed his life to these days.
So far so good.
The first paragraphs of the book are very fluid and enjoyable and get the reader to know Dennis just enough to "start walking" with him on the story. We understand he's a gay person, married to an awesome guy named Bruce and with whom he has a 12 years old child named Ashley.
Dennis talks about his life before Bruce — basically a drama queen (by his own words, mind you) who could never imagine himself for a whole day in a forest hut for a romantic escape. Bruce somewhat manages to turn him into a hiking freak and together they go up and about various trips that Dennis boasts about the entire first part of the book. Here I was already fearing of being in sight of a poser's journal. Not too far off into the book this fear becomes a huge wall I slammed my face against. You can tell this person puts into hiking and travelling some sort of desperation to make something of his life. I think that, pretty much like in the case of "Eat, Pray, Love" author, Dennis is so focused on his career and the idea of being productive and acknowledged as something that he constantly wears a mask. Sometimes this gets him out of his insecurities closet, sometimes he gets him to appear as some sort of a superhero in front of his audience. But this is okay —the world has this kind of people, too, and I'm as entitled to avoid them as they are to exist. Peace and love. What I didn't like at all is that Dennis transformed a sacred journey for self-discovery into some cheap mottos and much-bragged-about fake awakening. For him the most important thing was receiving a sign, a guidance from some divine entity, to basically ensure he was the best theatre director and needed to keep on his beloved artist (?) life. Well, first of art isn't acknowledgment. Second, you just don't take on a spiritual journey for something as flimsy as career uncertainty. But never mind that, the most hilarious bit of the entire diary is that I saw signals everywhere and he couldn't grasp them because he was so focused on seeing only what he wanted to see.
The Camino was just another excuse to plan steps and do the walking math. I don't assume to know exactly what he experienced or what he thought on the path, but based on how he wrote things down he just had an urge to change scenery, go for a couple of days in a spa and brag about the little Spanish he knew. He was shocked to see a pilgrim walking the path as close as possible to Jesus in the desert (basically 100% based on charity offerings, with no money or food) while he had a fine bed and a rich lunch criticising the cheap wine served (surely a connesseur, expecting prime quality food and drink in the Mediterranean area and spending at best 10 quid... Applause).
And, funny thing, at the end of the book he has the guts to mock other pilgrims based on the mere kilometres walked. I mean, astonishing. What an example of new Siddhartha we have here.
I guess I can safely close the chapter about this person summarising him with the word "vaporous" and be done with it.

Something really disturbing about Dennis' mindset (and that brought me to hate the book) is this insatiable hunger for changing things and he stomps and rants about them continuously as if they were divine rules to be accepted. Like, there's a bit towards the end in which he pushes for same-gender restrooms. I guess some people never thought about gender differentiated bathrooms as a big achievement but, well, they are. A lot of women were raped in public bathrooms. I'm sure this still happens, but at the very least there's an extra step to ensure safety. On the same line, he rants about people not accepting particularly themed theatre shows. I mean, you can't impose that your ideas are accepted by everyone at all times. The world is made and thrives because of different thoughts.

I conclude obviously with a heavy critique and a very disappointed heart. I expected this book to be a revelation and a true change in the life of someone but in the end... it wasn't. I'd only recommend it to have an insight on the modern society paradox and the inability to break free from it. On the same line, what it's said about Dennis' daughter also gives plenty to think about (and there's no flowers here either).