{"id":18131,"date":"2019-02-01T01:10:52","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T06:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=20538"},"modified":"2019-02-02T23:34:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T04:34:41","slug":"book-review-shaman-express-by-beretta-rousseau","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2019\/02\/01\/book-review-shaman-express-by-beretta-rousseau\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review – Shaman Express by Beretta Rousseau"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Book Review <\/strong>
Shaman Express <\/strong>
by Beretta Rousseau<\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Short\nreview: I hated this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nLet\nme say right off the bat that I am the wrong person to be reviewing\nthis book. I am going to be fifty-nine this year; I am a die-hard\nradical feminist; I have been in recovery for almost thirty years\nnow; I read the entire canon of Carlos Castanedas over forty years\nago; I grew out of this kind of \u201cusing drugs to find spiritual\nenlightenment\u201d bullshit before the age of THIRTY. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tTo\nbe honest, I might have liked this book \u2013 a whole lot \u2013 when I\nwas twenty-one or so \u2013 but that was many, many years ago. In my\ntwenties, I had a great attraction for erotic literature and any book\nwith lots of sex in it, whether or not it was necessary to the plot. \nThis book is one of those books. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tI\nwas ready to throw it into the garbage after I read the first\nsentence. \u201cI woke up sweating, alarmed, and with a painful\nerection.\u201d So fucking what? Waking up with an erection is\nperfectly normal. This author acts like it\u2019s some kind of\naccomplishment. <\/em>I\u2019m sorry but I don\u2019t want to read this\nshit. I really don\u2019t. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tOn\npage 10: \u201cIt took me some time to realize that the twelve-step\nprogram I had entered was a spiritual program.\u201d Gee \u2026 how fucked\nup were you? Because all <\/em>twelve-step programs tell you that\nright off the bat. <\/em>But of course, they also tell us that some\nof us are more damaged that others. This author is obviously very\ndamaged. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing is, \u201cBeretta Rousseau\u201d is actually two people \u2013 Omar Beretta and B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Rousseau \u2013 evidently a man and a woman \u2013 and they trade off chapters in the novel like John Lennon and Yoko Ono trading off songs on \u201cDouble Fantasy\u201d. It makes for a very uneven novel (just like \u201cDouble Fantasy\u201d). Rousseau is the better writer, in my humble opinion. I googled them separately and Omar Beretta is a travel writer \u2013 he looks to be maybe ten years or so younger than me but of course, looks are deceiving \u2013 and B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Rousseau is a Belgium writer born in 1980 \u2013 incidentally the year I first took LSD (I was twenty). I couldn\u2019t find very much about Omar Beretta \u2013 or the correct Omar Beretta because it\u2019s apparently a very common name and there were lots of them to choose from, from investment bankers to Uranium entrepreneurs to Argentine tax lawyers \u2013 but with a little work, I did find an interview with Berretta which is here: https:\/\/yacarevolador.com\/omar-beretta-has-been-interviewed\/<\/a>. According to that article, you can access Berretta\u2019s website here: https:\/\/yacarevolador.com\/<\/a>. It is in Spanish but can be translated easily into English. Rousseau has a website that you can visit here: https:\/\/www.benedicterousseau.com\/<\/a>. Rousseau is Belgium but her site is in English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book is labeled \u201cA Novel\u201d but I am not sure that it is. It really reads more like creative nonfiction \u2013 especially with all the quotes and the footnotes \u2013 but of course, that\u2019s the trendy cool way to write novels nowadays \u2013 check out The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao<\/strong><\/a> by Junot Diaz \u2013 but Diaz\u2019s book is obviously a novel whereas Shaman Express<\/strong><\/em> is a novel only because it bends the barrier between fiction and non-fiction. In a way, it doesn\u2019t matter at all if it\u2019s a novel or not. It\u2019s the story that counts \u2013 whether or not it\u2019s factually true is beside the point. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tI\nguess I just didn\u2019t care about the story. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tSo\nwhat is <\/em>the story? That\u2019s a really good question. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tPart\nOne is called \u201cAlive\u201d. Part Two is called \u201cDead\u201d. Part\nThree is called \u201cAwake\u201d. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n All\nthree parts are written as diary entries. Each chapter is an entry \u2013\none written by Berretta and the next one by Rousseau. I found\nmyself having to read chapters over and over again, since none of it\nmade very much sense. It seemed that both Berretta and Rousseau were\ninterested in \u201cshamanism\u201d and in finding evidence of European\nshamanism. Why <\/em>they don\u2019t do this in a scholarly fashion is\nbeyond me. There are all kinds of scholarship on this very subject. \nI myself have been studying European shamanism \u2013 not that I called\nit that \u2013 since the mid-1980\u2019s. But I guess if they spent their\ntime in libraries, we wouldn\u2019t have a novel to read, wouldn\u2019t we.\n The trouble is \u2013 if you\u2019re looking for \u201caction\u201d \u2013 there\nreally isn\u2019t any \u201cthere\u201d there. Or \u2013 it\u2019s there \u2013 but\nit\u2019s all busyness with no real substance. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201caction\u201d goes from Amsterdam to Brussels to Belsedere to Ulan-Ude back to Brussels and then to Lake Baikal and then to Bangkok \u2013 but during all this movement, there is so much hallucination and \u201cguided meditation\u201d that you wonder if any of this travel is actually happening at all or if Berretta and Rousseau are really talking to any of the people they are talking to or even to one another. It\u2019s almost like they were sending emails to one another and the chapters don\u2019t quite match up. On the other hand, the whole novel made me think of those story-games we played as children \u2013 one person starts the story and another person adds to it and it gets crazier and crazier with the telling. A version of this is in Louisa May Alcott\u2019s Little Women<\/strong><\/a>, in the chapter \u201cCamp Lawrence\u201d. Since Berretta is a travel writer, this is eminently possible. He seems to be the one who is always on the move and Rousseau is always having to meet him at this or that place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nIn\none of the guided meditations, Rousseau meets her \u201cspirit guide\u201d\nwho apparently is the god Apollo. She writes, \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t\u201c\u2026My\nspirit guide strokes my hair tenderly. I find comfort in this\nheavenly touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t\u2018Your\nsituation is simple, Benedetta. You must choose between life and\ndeath. You must hurry though\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\t\u2026This\nseems unreal to me. I am speechless. I am not even sure I am having\nthis conversation.\u201d (page 70)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nSo\nshe chooses life. Well, of course she does. But that\u2019s the end of\nthe first part and like I said earlier, the section part is called\n\u201cDeath\u201d. And believe me, it\u2019s a small death just to get\nthrough it. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThe\nend of the third part ends with: \u201cAwake. Really?\u201d and then,\n\u201cOne day at a time can lead to a glimpse of eternity.\u201d (page 214)\n Which is probably the wisest statement in this entire book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAgain\n\u2013 I don\u2019t want to diss this book entirely \u2013 some of you are\ngoing to read this and absolutely love it. I just didn\u2019t. \t<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tOne\nof the links on Rousseau\u2019s website is entitled \u201cTop Five Tips for\nWriting in a Literary Collaboration\u201d. I highly recommend this for\nany writer, whether or not you write with other people \u2013 and let\u2019s\nface it, most of us do <\/em>collaborate with other writers, whether\nwe are aware of it or not \u2013 and I liked #2, \u201cPractice\nconversation\u201d. If you read this book as a conversation between two\npeople, it\u2019s Rousseau\u2019s voice that is the more engaging. I found\nmyself rushing through Berretta\u2019s chapters, just wanting to get\nthem over with \u2013 they were oversexed and over-violent \u2013 so I\ncould relax with the more soothing and reasonable voice of Rousseau. \nI was also wishing that there were a few more voices in this\nconversation. Maybe the teacher\u2019s? Or a few other students? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThe\nother thing I thought while reading this \u201cnovel\u201d was that it was\nreally a screenplay and the authors didn\u2019t realize it. Perhaps\nit\u2019s been optioned and we\u2019ll all be watching the movie on Netflix\nat this time next year. I do think it will work better as a movie. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\tThat\nsaid, I know there are plenty of people who will absolutely love this\nbook. I am just not one of them. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berretta\nRousseau. Shaman Express<\/strong><\/em>.\n WA: Amazon Digital Services, LLC, 2018. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alcott,\nLouisa May. Little Women<\/strong><\/em>.\nNY: Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, 1947. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaman Express on Amazon<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

About\nthe Author:<\/strong>\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Polly\nMacDavid<\/strong> lives\nin Buffalo, New York at the moment but that could easily change,\nsince she is a gypsy at heart. Like a gypsy, she is attracted to the\ndivinatory arts, as well as camp fires and dancing barefoot. She has\nthree cats who all help her with her magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her\nphilosophy about religion and magic is that it must be thoroughly\nbased in science and logic. She is Dianic Wiccan and she is solitary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\nblogs at silverapplequeen.wordpress.com<\/a>.\nShe writes about general life, politics and poetry. She is writing a\nnovel about sex, drugs and recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Book Review Shaman Express by Beretta Rousseau Short review: I hated this book. Let me say right off the bat that I am the wrong person to be reviewing this book. I am going to be fifty-nine this year; I am a die-hard radical feminist; I have been in recovery for almost thirty years now; I read the entire canon of Carlos Castanedas over forty years ago; I grew out of this kind of \u201cusing drugs to find spiritual enlightenment\u201d bullshit before the age of THIRTY. To be honest, I might have liked this book \u2013 a whole lot \u2013 when I was twenty-one or so \u2013 but that was many, many years ago. In my twenties, I had a great attraction for erotic literature and any book with lots of sex in it, whether or not it was necessary to the plot. This book is one of those books. I was ready to throw it into the garbage after I read the first sentence. \u201cI woke up sweating, alarmed, and with a painful erection.\u201d So fucking what? Waking up with an erection is perfectly normal. This author acts like it\u2019s some kind of accomplishment. I\u2019m sorry but I don\u2019t want to read this shit. I really don\u2019t. On page 10: \u201cIt took me some time to realize that the twelve-step program I had entered was a spiritual program.\u201d Gee \u2026 how fucked up were you? Because all twelve-step programs tell you that right off the bat. But of course, they also tell us that some of us are more damaged that others. This author is obviously very damaged. The thing is, \u201cBeretta Rousseau\u201d is actually two people \u2013 Omar Beretta and B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Rousseau \u2013 evidently a man and a woman \u2013 and they trade off chapters in the novel like John Lennon and Yoko Ono trading off songs on \u201cDouble Fantasy\u201d. It makes for a very uneven novel (just like \u201cDouble Fantasy\u201d). Rousseau is the better writer, in my humble opinion. I googled them separately and Omar Beretta is a travel writer \u2013 he looks to be maybe ten years or so younger than me but of course, looks are deceiving \u2013 and B\u00e9n\u00e9dicte Rousseau is a Belgium writer born in 1980 \u2013 incidentally the year I first took LSD (I was twenty). I couldn\u2019t find very much about Omar Beretta \u2013 or the correct Omar Beretta because it\u2019s apparently a very common name and there were lots of them to choose from, from investment bankers to Uranium entrepreneurs to Argentine tax lawyers \u2013 but with a little work, I did find an interview with Berretta which is here: https:\/\/yacarevolador.com\/omar-beretta-has-been-interviewed\/. According to that article, you can access Berretta\u2019s website here: https:\/\/yacarevolador.com\/. It is in Spanish but can be translated easily into English. Rousseau has a website that you can visit here: https:\/\/www.benedicterousseau.com\/. Rousseau is Belgium but her site is in English. This book is labeled \u201cA Novel\u201d but I am not sure that it is. It really reads more like creative nonfiction \u2013 especially with all the quotes and the footnotes \u2013 but of course, that\u2019s the trendy cool way to write novels nowadays \u2013 check out The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz \u2013 but Diaz\u2019s book is obviously a novel whereas Shaman Express is a novel only because it bends the barrier between fiction and non-fiction. In a way, it doesn\u2019t matter at all if it\u2019s a novel or not. It\u2019s the story that counts \u2013 whether or not it\u2019s factually true is beside the point. I guess I just didn\u2019t care about the story. So what is the story? That\u2019s a really good question. Part One is called \u201cAlive\u201d. Part Two is called \u201cDead\u201d. Part Three is called \u201cAwake\u201d. All three parts are written as diary entries. Each chapter is an entry \u2013 one written by Berretta and the next one by Rousseau. I found myself having to read chapters over and over again, since none of it made very much sense. It seemed that both Berretta and Rousseau were interested in \u201cshamanism\u201d and in finding evidence of European shamanism. Why they don\u2019t do this in a scholarly fashion is beyond me. There are all kinds of scholarship on this very subject. I myself have been studying European shamanism \u2013 not that I called it that \u2013 since the mid-1980\u2019s. But I guess if they spent their time in libraries, we wouldn\u2019t have a novel to read, wouldn\u2019t we. The trouble is \u2013 if you\u2019re looking for \u201caction\u201d \u2013 there really isn\u2019t any \u201cthere\u201d there. Or \u2013 it\u2019s there \u2013 but it\u2019s all busyness with no real substance. The \u201caction\u201d goes from Amsterdam to Brussels to Belsedere to Ulan-Ude back to Brussels and then to Lake Baikal and then to Bangkok \u2013 but during all this movement, there is so much hallucination and \u201cguided meditation\u201d that you wonder if any of this travel is actually happening at all or if Berretta and Rousseau are really talking to any of the people they are talking to or even to one another. It\u2019s almost like they were sending emails to one another and the chapters don\u2019t quite match up. On the other hand, the whole novel made me think of those story-games we played as children \u2013 one person starts the story and another person adds to it and it gets crazier and crazier with the telling. A version of this is in Louisa May Alcott\u2019s Little Women, in the chapter \u201cCamp Lawrence\u201d. Since Berretta is a travel writer, this is eminently possible. He seems to be the one who is always on the move and Rousseau is always having to meet him at this or that place. In one of the guided meditations, Rousseau meets her \u201cspirit guide\u201d who apparently is the god Apollo. She writes, \u201c\u2026My spirit guide strokes my hair tenderly. I find comfort in this heavenly touch. \u2018Your situation is simple, Benedetta. You must choose between life and death. You must hurry though\u2026\u2019 \u2026This seems unreal to me. I am speechless. I am not even sure I am having this conversation.\u201d (page 70) So she chooses life. Well, of course she does. But that\u2019s the end of the first part and like I said earlier, the section part is called \u201cDeath\u201d. And believe me, it\u2019s a small death just to get through it. The end of the third part ends with: \u201cAwake. Really?\u201d and then, \u201cOne day at a time can lead to a glimpse of eternity.\u201d (page 214) Which is probably the wisest statement in this entire book. Again \u2013 I don\u2019t want to diss this book entirely \u2013 some of you are going to read this and absolutely love it. I just didn\u2019t. One of the links on Rousseau\u2019s website is entitled \u201cTop Five Tips for Writing in a Literary Collaboration\u201d. I highly recommend this for any writer, whether or not you write with other people \u2013 and let\u2019s face it, most of us do collaborate with other writers, whether we are aware of it or not \u2013 and I liked #2, \u201cPractice conversation\u201d. If you read this book as a conversation between two people, it\u2019s Rousseau\u2019s voice that is the more engaging. I found myself rushing through Berretta\u2019s chapters, just wanting to get them over with \u2013 they were oversexed and over-violent \u2013 so I could relax with the more soothing and reasonable voice of Rousseau. I was also wishing that there were a few more voices in this conversation. Maybe the teacher\u2019s? Or a few other students? The other thing I thought while reading this \u201cnovel\u201d was that it was really a screenplay and the authors didn\u2019t realize it. Perhaps it\u2019s been optioned and we\u2019ll all be watching the movie on Netflix at this time next year. I do think it will work better as a movie. That said, I know there are plenty of people who will absolutely love this book. I am just not one of them. References Berretta Rousseau. Shaman Express. WA: Amazon Digital Services, LLC, 2018. Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, 1947. Shaman Express on Amazon *** About the Author: Polly MacDavid lives in Buffalo, New York at the moment but that could easily change, since she is a gypsy at heart. Like a gypsy, she is attracted to the divinatory arts, as well as camp fires and dancing barefoot. She has three cats who all help her with her magic. Her philosophy about religion and magic is that it must be thoroughly based in science and logic. She is Dianic Wiccan and she is solitary. She blogs at silverapplequeen.wordpress.com. She writes about general life, politics and poetry. She is writing a novel about sex, drugs and recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}