Yesterday, while Walking, I called a friend who reads voraciously to ask if she had read Cheryl Strayed’s Wild.  She had.  Such a drama queen, I said.  I was relieved my friend agreed as I'd begun wondering, as I walked, if I am simply too critical.  I tempered my judgment anyway.  She does light on some points that resonate, I said.  But I don’t think she knows herself.  Not really.  And the parts where she is trying to be funny—I just didn’t find them very funny.  I was listening to the audio disc though, and I found the reading of it affected, distracting.  I’m gonna give the book a chance.  I’m gonna read more.  After all, I said to my friend, this book’s on the NY Times Bestseller list.  A lot of people are reading it.  It was an Oprah book, my friend said.  That explains it, I said.

Here’s a charming novel about a middling man in midlife living on south coast of British Isle.  It seems he and his wife have slid into complacency of some sort each partner uncommunicative and unhappy.  One day he receives a note in the mail from an old work friend dying on the north coast.  Rather than put his reply in the postal box he keeps on walking, right out of his village, beyond and beyond, at various points also gathering press, then gawkers and groupies (told with a dose of cynicism, generally), though the narrative does not swerve unnecessarily.  We do eventually learn why Frye is walking the span of the Isle on this his apparent quest to keep an old acquaintance alive until he can hand his reply over. Rachel Joyce, a well-seasoned writer, structured and delivered this insight brilliantly.  This is indeed a beautiful allegorical novel that holds within essential truths about being human and about how a courageous person can find, finally, him or herself.

Being a person who likes walking especially, I particularly enjoy such stories.  I wonder there are so many of them lately.  Surely it did not begin with Tom Hanks in his role as Forrest Gump either, but that does come to mind as a predecessor.  I couldn’t bear to watch that movie (Gump) again, though I’d gladly watch almost anything else Hanks has done.  Anyway, lately we’ve seen Martin Sheen in The Way on the Camino de Santiagoafter his son’s death.  Now also Cheryl Strayed’s presently popular memoir Wildwith her walking the Pacific Rim Trail.  And of course, now also Harold Frye’s “unlikely pilgrimage.”  I like a good road trip, especially on foot, so I welcome this subcategory of travel narrative.  Maybe few people walk much anymore so busy is everyone cavorting by vehicle that having a good long walk seems very special indeed.