cover image A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful

Gideon Lewis-Kraus. Riverhead, $25.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-59448-725-5

A young writer seeks a cure for his fecklessness by following roads very much taken in this scintillating travel memoir. After floundering in Berlin’s entropic bohemia—equal parts pretentious art opening and woozy after-party—Lewis-Kraus embarked with a friend on the 500-mile pilgrimage of Santiago de Compostella in Spain. Its route marked with imperious yellow arrows, the trek offered “pointless direction” toward the sacred that temporarily eases his anxiety over what to do with his life, as well as sweltering death marches, gory blisters, and an international cast of oddball penitents. His pilgrimage itinerary continues with a circuit of 88 temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku—a lonely ordeal of cold rain, tasty rice balls, and piquant Buddhist legends—and a trip to a Ukrainian Hassidic shrine accompanied by his father, an ex-rabbi turned flamboyant gay demimondaine. The author’s resolve to undergo a comparably epic inner journey sometimes causes the narrative to bog down in navel-gazing and excessive palaver about his testy relationship with his dad. Fortunately, Lewis-Kraus’s vivid descriptive powers and funny, shaggy-dog philosophizing carry readers past the rough patches. The result is an entertaining, thoughtful portrait of a slacker caught up in life’s quest for something. Agent: Tina Bennett. (May)