Product Description

The author and actress chronicles her journey along the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Spain--the famous pilgrimage route that has been taken by pilgrims ranging from St. Francis of Assisi to Chaucer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #366254 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

A Heartfelt Adventure
Shirley MacLaine is a wonderful writer whose adventure on "The Camino" (a 500-mile trek/pilgrimage across Spain) is both enlightening and entertaining. Her journey of self discovery and her will to share her truth inspires me. I love her courage as she shares wisdom that cannot be proven, but can be experienced. To use her quote, "the absence of evidence does not mean the evidence of absence".

Enlightenment seems difficult to explain, but easy to experience. Authors Ariel & Shya Kane explain it well in their books Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life, How to Create a Magical Relationship: The 3 Simple Ideas that Will Instantaneously Transform Your Love Lifee and Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment. Within the pages of these books I have discovered the ease of well-being and how to live in the moment. I am grateful that authors like Shirley MacLaine and Ariel & Shya Kane have done the "footwork" so I can experience Enlightenment while reading a great book at home - without walking on fire or walking 500 miles on the Camino.

A Dull Slog
Like several of this lady's books, El Camino is a judicious or perhaps injudicious mix of personal pilgrimage, self-absorbed travelogue and some sex and romance here and there, either personal or relating to those around her. The pilgrimage itself is the trek across the mountains of Northern Spain to Santiago do Compostela, completed by thousands of people and following the footsteps of St. James (Sant Iago). On the way she meets various different people, speculates on spiritual themes and relates a more accurate version of her affair with the unnamed British socialist MP told in one or two of her earlier works. He turns out to have been not a Brit at all but the Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme, who was assassinated in Stockholm some many years ago now. She claims he might have brought more of a social democracy to the collapsed soviet bloc had he survived, instead of the socialist economy collapsing only to be replaced by bandit capitalism, or, as some would have it, with equal accuracy, kosher capitalism. There might be something in it, though what weight Palme might have had, bearing in mind that he was something of a laughing stock to many outside Sweden, is doubtful. Interesting idea, though. The authoress eventually makes it through a scrum of media hangers-on and reaches her goal. To me, this book had some interesting parts, but I should not say i was riveted by it.