Amazon.co.uk Review
Isabel Losada leaves no stone unturned--literally--on her trip down The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment. Wishing to live her life "completely, abundantly, joyfully and stupidly" she makes an entertaining travelling companion as she describes her efforts to move away from her in-a-rut life where "nothing was changing". And she takes us everywhere with her: a life-skills course in North London; a convent retreat in Oxford; T'ai chi in France; a massage in Bath--even the past as she explores her previous incarnations. The journey is invigorating and exhausting and enriched by the numerous characters she meets en route.

The book is much more than a travelogue, however. Losada describes with considerable skill and sensitivity the breakthroughs in the lives of people around her--the woman who starts to work through childhood abuse, for instance, and another who confronts the bullies from school--and her honesty is refreshing and often surprising (her description of colonic irrigation takes the breath away). Often she picks up useful nuggets of inspiration that the reader can take away and digest and these are sprinkled through the text. Intercut throughout is her life with her daughter in a "shoebox" in Battersea and her burgeoning romance with Mark, the man she meets at a hypnotherapy seminar.

Losada has an entertaining and witty style and comes across as somewhat bossy but likeable all the same. And the stones she doesn't leave unturned?

The first part of this new experience involved sitting up and lying down again on to a row of hot stones that had been laid down to head up the muscles on either side of the spine. Damned clever
. --Christina McLoughlin
Synopsis
'You know those people who always radiate cheerful optimism...? Nauseating aren't they? I want to become one of those...I want to find out how to live life completely, abundantly, joyfully, stupidly. This is my quest. Enlightenment.' So proclaims Isabel Losada, Starbucks addict, exercise allergic and self-confessed sceptic as she sets out on the road to enlightenment. Beginning with an Insight seminar where hundred people with name badges learn to 'share', Isabel journeyed through a gruelling course of 'Rolfing' nude Goddess workshops, a weekend of tantric sex ('Yes! Yes! Yes!') and a reincarnation session, not to mention a spot of colonic irrigation. Irreverent yet open-minded, funny and always honest, The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment is also moving and ultimately illuminating. For anyone who has ever been tempted to dip a toe in the waters of self-discovery, Isabel Losada plunges you straight in.

Sending to emilythegoat as an RABCK

Merry Christmas!

Sent to me by the very generous angellica who is a real christmas angel as this was a RABCK - angellica saw that I had this book on my wish list (thanks Cliff!).

It came in a shower of glitter and with a lovely christmas card too :)

Thank you very much - can't wait to read, but will finish my current bookring first.

What a great book - I really liked Isobel. It's such a nicely written book, doesn't get too deep, and at times is really funny, but she doesn't make a mockery of the courses she went on, which I would be tempted to do. I found some chapters less interesting than others, but as I'm generally quite averse to this sort of 'new age' thing that's not surprising. I will definately be looking out for more books by Isobel Losada.

Thanks again to Angellica for giving me such a lovely surprise. I'm going to pass this book to my mum (QuietEarth) who has been on a fair few of these new age things herself :D I hope she'll enjoy it.

Oh dear.

Sorry Em, I absolutely hated this book.

Maybe the kindest thing to say would be that maybe I hated it because it reminded me of myself back in the eighties, dipping into all this new-agey stuff and lapping it up.

Less kind things?? Worst was, I was expecting to laugh a lot, and I only managed a slight smile once or twice .....

The book is a mish-mash of stuff - reflexology mixed in with NLP, astrology mixed in with Christianity (or one branch of it, anyway), tantra mixed in with re-birthing .... and it scarcely skims the surface of any of it.

It's not very clear quite what Isabel was trying to achieve - give information? Make people laugh? Get a load of personal stuff off her chest?? Let us all know what a happy bunny she is now???

I know this is unkind, but the more the book went on, the more self-obsessed Isabel seemed to become - I could have done without the blow-by-blow account of her relationships.

My friend Richard says this is one of the thirty worst books he's ever read (and he's a sixty year old ex-English teacher, rofl). I don't think I'd put it that far down, but oh dear, nearly ....

If you're interested in this kind of thing, it would probably be good to decide whether you want to do some therapy-type stuff to make you feel better (emotionally and/or physically), whether you want to investigate the astrology-type stuff to find out more about your "character" and how you tick, or whether you do actually want to pursue what some people call enlightenment and find out "what it's all about" (not about being permanently "happy", as Isabel seems to think.)

There are good books about all of those things - unfortunately this wasn't one of them, in my opinion :(

I'm going to give it back to Em to pass it on to someone else - I really wish I had enjoyed it more.

CAUGHT IN LONDON ENGLAND

RELEASE NOTES:

Took it to a LETS (Local Exchange Trading Scheme) trading day.

Guin picked it up ... I hope she likes it! I wonder if she''ll journal it ... if you do, Hello Guin!