Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago, Journeys Along an Ancient Way in Modern Spain Book

Thoroughly enjoyable and relatable semi-anthropological look at pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago'but perhaps best read by those who have walked the Camino? I saw myself, and people I know, over and over again in this book, but in ways that would not have been particularly noteworthy before I walked the Camino, and I think it's more interesting to see those connections after than to look for them during (she says, having read a giant stack of Camino books before embarking on the adventure...).

For all that she approaches the Camino from an academic standpoint here, Frey's analysis is not without some biases of her own. The book is also quite outdated'Frey talks as though the things she says are unequivocally true, and perhaps in the late 90s they were, but...things change. You no longer need maps to get to Finisterre, for example (although if you have no sense of direction, like *cough* certain people I *cough* know, you might get ten kilometers of lost anyway). Accommodations and prices and policies have changed so much that those described here are often hardly recognisable. It doesn't make the book less valuable as a resource, but it's a good reminder to the contemporary reader to double-check more recent facts.

It's pretty broad-ranging in terms of content, which is great in the sense of giving one things to think about, but there are plenty of places where I'd love to see longer, individual pieces...but then, I suppose this wasn't the work for them. Still, some great nuggets to chew on. The hundred-kilometer rule is relatively recent and arbitrary, for example; also, Frey spends a while talking about what makes a pilgrim a pilgrim'and the upshot is that everyone has a different answer. You're a pilgrim if you walk the whole way (and what is 'the whole way'? That hundred kilometers? From Roncesvalles? From St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port?), or if you take a bus some of the way but do it with religious motivation, or if you fly straight to Santiago from wherever you live to see the cathedral...