Book Review-- Ghost Rider by Neal Peart

Ghost Rider is a memoir of the author's (Neal Peart, Rock Star Drummer, author, etc.) journey from grief to grief as he travels alone across North America on his motorcycle. The reader is brought into his inner thoughts through his journals and letters to dear friends and family. The level of his grief is profound, and for me it meant that I sometimes needed to take a break from the book. And his journey through that grief goes on, and on, just like the Ghost Rider. The author is very gracious for allowing the reader into this tender and painful part of his life. I was amazed at the kindness he displayed toward his own pain-- noting that his grief had splintered him into many characters, each of whom served a different purpose in helping him cope. He seemed to have a tenderness toward these fractured aspects of himself and treated them as if they were all friends. It was a very profound lesson in moving on by keeping moving (but moving in a previously unforseen and unknowable direction). I was relieved and satisfied that eventually he is able to exit "Death Valley" and find access to joy again.

One thing that I found very interesting in the book were the common literary references (didn't expect this from a drummer in a rock band.) For example, the title of one of the chapters is "Homeward Angel, On the Fly" is a reference to a Milton poem (possibly also a Thomas Wolfe book entitled Look Homeward, Angel), Lycidas, in which an "uncouth swain" mourns the too-soon passing of a dear one lost at sea,


"Bitter constraint, and sad occasion dear,
Compels me to disturb your season due:
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer"


At the point in the poem where Milton writes, "Look homeward angel" he makes a turning point from describing the bitter sorrow that the whole earth feels at the loss of this friend, noting that the weeping must end as Lycidas has gone home as an angel where heaven is all that much more improved for the presence of Lycidas. And then the shepherd aka "the uncouth swain" moves on...

"And now the Sun had stretch'd out all the hills,
And now was dropt into the Western bay;
At last he rose, and twitch'd his Mantle blew:
To morrow to fresh Woods, and Pastures new. "