15 out of 15 people found this review helpful.
Japa Mala
Date of Review: Nov 26, 2007
The Bottom Line: Interesting well written honest memoir. You will like it if you are into reading multicultural type books. Makes you think about your own concepts of God, religion,and love.
The writer states in the introduction that this memoir was about her search for balance. However, despite the intriguing first sentence in part 1 of the book, "I wish Giovanni would kiss me," I did not really connect to this memoir until page 103.
First impressions
At first,it seemed to me like a story of a well-to-do-thirty-something-year old American writer who suffers from depression and loneliness,gets fed up with her marriage, goes off to commit adultery with a new lover, falls back into the depression cycle and then goes off traveling the world to find herself.
The Memoir
The memoir is structured in the pattern of a "japa mala", that is, a string of 108 beads used for meditation by Hindus and Buddhists, like the Roman Catholic rosary. There are three sections to the book and each section consists of 36 tales. This structure cleverly reflects the theme of balance.
The first section has to do with the visit to Italy to enjoy the pleasures of eating good Italian food and ice cream. The second section has to do with India and the search for God in an ashram. The setting of the third section is Indonesia and her goals are to generally find balance and specifically find a medicine man that she met two years before. Three countries all beginning with the letter "I", another reflection of balance.
What I liked
So here is what I really like about the book:
I liked the concept on page 103 put forward by Giulio that the secret to understanding a city and its people is to learn "the word" of the street. The word for Rome he suggests is SEX, whereas for the Vatican,it is POWER. I found myself thinking of all the places I have lived and coming up with a word for those places and for my own personal word.
I enjoyed reading about the writer's search to personally have an encounter with God through chanting, prayer, and meditation. The writer points out that every religion has a subset of devotees who seek a transcendent experience with God and they all describe the same energy that fills their bodies using different names: ki, chi, taksu, the Holy Spirit.
I liked the lessons she learned in tale 58 about prayer, destiny and controlling one's thoughts. She poses a very potent question on page 177 in relation to deliberate and specific prayer, "If I want transformation but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur?"
I liked the cultural information about the different countries. In Bali, for example, we learn that most people give their children only four names: Wayan, Made, Nyoman and Ketut meaning First, Second, Third and Fourth and the names connote birth order.
The tone is conversational and gutsy. The writer is brutally honest about her flaws and her issues with men, love and intimacy. One of the strong points of the book is the fascinating characters that the writer meets along this spiritual and intimate personal journey. By far, the most interesting characters for me were Richard from Texas and Wayan, the healer cum sex therapist cum pimp in Bali.
