THE HOLY MAN'S JOURNEY
By: Trott, Susan
"Being nice is good luck," explains Anna, a
spirited Irish healer, to her five-year-old son. "Why didn't I come up with that
in all these years?" laughs Joe, a 73-year-old holy man with advanced heart
disease. Like last year's fable, The Holy Man, this sequel charms by not taking
the holy man role too seriously. "People are holy, every last one of them," Joe
announces as he leaves his mountain hermitage in an undisclosed land. Dying and
determined to deliver a healing lesson to Chen, his own teacher, Joe journeys to
Chen's lavish "Universe-city" accompanied by Anna, his chosen successor. Along
the way, the kind but inexperienced Anna is treated to life lessons. She listens
as Joe helps a bitter, unfulfilled cab driver find his true calling; she watches
incredulously as Joe disarms a knife-wielding thief with openhearted generosity;
she learns, as Joe defuses a fight between two taxi drivers whose vehicles
collided, that taking the blame in a situation "even if you didn't do it,
smoothes the knottiest situation spectacularly and immediately." Finally,
grappling with her dislike of Chen, whom she condemns as self-aggrandizing and
greedy, Anna comes to grasp Joe's ultimate message of loving tolerance and
self-knowledge. Some of the lessons sound like Psychotherapy 101 ("my theory
about obsessive collecting is that it is repressed creativity"). Yet, Trott is
as wily as her sweet-spirited holy man, using her no-pressure storytelling style
to lull readers into unexpected moments of wit and illumination. Dutch rights
sold to Uitgeverij Bzztoh. TitlePeek
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