Caught In The Act

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 16 AUG 2004

A sequel comes, ironically, from the author of Nothing Left Over: A Plain and Simple Life. This book is a series of musings, essays from which themes emerge organically and offer themselves up as chapter names, in a form perched midway between essay and journal. The author, a longtime editor of spirituality books, is well read and alludes over a wide range, from revered Buddhist masters and contemporary teachers through Christian scripture to novelist Cormac McCarthy. She writes from a Buddhist perspective but a distinctly amateur one, refreshingly unenlightened, confessing that she has meditated for 40 years without ever really enjoying it. Such faithfulness and disarming honesty characterize the book, which mingles glimpses from the life of a perfection-driven, always-on-time individual with ruminations on her process of thinking and making meaning. The close scrutiny of her thinking may frustrate some who find it too inward or self-absorbed, while others will nod, recognizing a kindred deliberative soul. The book has understated momentum, because it ably traces a journey of letting go of job, of expectations, of previous conceptions, of fixed identities, of a desire to know before doing, of perfectionistic tendencies in the author's new hobby of brushpainting. This modest book would make a good handsell for the right reflective reader.