Ghost Rider: Travels on the Healing Road by Neil Peart

Much of the book is a monologue of letters written whilst on the road to friends and relatives, but primarily to his best friend and riding companion Brutus, residing in jail awaiting trial on drugs charges. Through those letters a picture coalesces of Neil’s thoughts, emotions, memories and aspirations for the future.

Much of the prose Neil uses in his letters to Brutus is the sort of macho bonding language you’d expect to hear in a Wasssup Budweiser advertisement. It does become hard work after a while and the letters often left me feeling that they’d conspicuously missed out on half of the conversation as little effort is made to fill in the holes left by the missing dialogue.

During the travels, Neil’s interest in the flora and fauna (birdlife in particular) of the Americas develops, as does his interest in US authors and their place in history and within the local environment that the Ghost Rider journeys through.

His writing style aside from the letters is easy to read and his observations on life, hotels, restaurant food and tourists are well written and easy to empathise with. Or at least I thought so, although maybe that means that I’m just as intolerant of other people as Neil is. Quite possibly!

If you buy this book with the expectation that it will be about motorcycles, you’ll be disappointed. Apart from the very occasional mishap and the need for regular servicing at one of the BMW franchises that extend throughout the US, the bike barely gets a mention and very much plays the role of a backing musician.

I didn’t exactly find it a page-turner all the way through either, indeed I put it down for long periods simply because I found the middle hard work — the letters to Brutus in particular.

Whilst I appreciate that the letters open a window into Neil’s mind and ongoing emotional redevelopment, I do feel another editor could have distilled their contents into a much easier-to-consume cordial. Once past that point though, the developing story once again got its hooks into me and the speed with which the end arrives left me unexpectedly wishing for more.