What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim

A Midlife Misadventure on Spain's Camino de Santiago de Compostela

De: Jane Christmas

Narrado por: Jane Christmas

To celebrate her 50th birthday and face the challenges of midlife, Jane Christmas joins 14 women to hike the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Despite a psychic's warning of catfights, death, and a sexy, fair-haired man, Christmas soldiers on. After a week of squabbles, the group splinters, and the real adventure begins. In vivid, witty style, she recounts her battles with loneliness, hallucinations of being joined by Steve Martin, as well as picturesque villages and even the fair-haired man. What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim is one trip neither the author nor the listener will forget.

©2007 Jane Christmas (P)2015 Post Hypnotic Press Inc.

the author's authenticity

I enjoyed the great deal of self-reflection and also the historical research that the writer inserted so keenly into this effort

Must read for peregrinas

I'm getting ready for my first Camino and I was so happy to find this book. Jane is a woman after my heart. She's practical, a little cynical but with a great sense of humor. I totally enjoyed her journey and can't wait to start mine.

Entertaining and inspiring

We are considering walking The Camino and chose this book at random out of the many offered. I loved this book! The author shared her adventure with humor and colorful stories. I am more inclined to head out on Camino now after listening to her book and I loved that she narrated it. I was sad when it ended!

Kept my interest.

Loved it, kept my interest, good voice inflection. lots of life nuggets presented that gets one thinking which I assume was the point of the book.

LISTEN TO THIS BOOK if you like irreverent humor!

If you're looking for a travel guide, or a new-agey uber positive account of the Camino de Santiago, this is probably not the book for you. If, on the other hand, you can appreciate a sharp, irreverent sense of humor and don't mind the occasional swear word, then you will enjoy this brutally honest description of the trials and tribulations Jane Christmas encountered when she took a very long walk on a whim.

To celebrate her 50th birthday, Jane Christmas announced (on CBC radio) that she was going to walk the Camino de Santiago. Admittedly, she didn't have a firm idea of what this might entail at the time. Nor did she foresee the reaction her announcement would engender. Soon, a group of women had contacted her wanting to join in the fun.



Things sort of snowballed from there, and Jane found herself leading a group of middle-aged women along this pilgrimage. Given that Jane is intolerant of stupidity and shallowness, she soon found the dynamics of the group difficult to bear and eventually she broke off from the group to go it alone. That solved some problems, but also confronted Jane with new issues to overcome, including loneliness and the sheer discomfort of such a long walk. 



Her observations are sharp and sometimes less than kind, but Jane is also aware of her own shortcomings, too. The author narrated it herself. Her other memoirs ("The Pelee Project," "Incontinent on the Continent" and "And Then There Were Nuns") were narrated by actors. Some might prefer the professional narration, but I liked both - it is fun to hear her voice her own work.

An Intimate Expose of Jane's Camino

I initially found myself wondering about Jane's cynical discriptive of her Camino experience. This said however her story is timeless, completely applicable even today. Her daily escapades kept me captivated and I must say that her Camino ended up being a thoroughly enjoyable read. Thanks for taking me along! A definite should read prior to embarking upon your own Camino adventure.

Real, honest experience

I really enjoyed this book. It had just enough humor and realness mixed in with important information about what walking the camino is like.

enjoyed very much!

highly recommend, well written and read.great humor. read as a part of preparing for my Camino

Missed the mark

I’ve walked three Caminos and read several books about the Camino. This is not a bad book. The writing is good, has humor and emotion although it did not tug my heartstrings or bring tears to my eyes. The guidebook-type interjections at some points were distracting and did not move the story along. For me like some other reviewers I was disappointed that the author did not undergo transformation as a result of the suffering she experienced as a pilgrim. Many of the lessons learned on the Camino are not apparent until much later but even in her epilogue she states gratefulness to God but does not describe transformation. Her narration was good but most of the time she sounded like she was reading instead of telling her personal story. It’s an entertaining read but not compelling.

Entertaining, sometimes chaotic

I love reading stories of the Camino and this was good fun. The way the group of women came together and then fell out and annoyed each other immediately and broke down into cliques and personality battles was amusing and typical. As Iane says, everyone was bitchy, though I wonder if she was aware that she was equally as bitchy. She piled in with insults and criticism of literally every single person. The descriptions of the places Jane visited were vivid and there was a good amount of interesting history included. I found Jane’s own story/message confusing and contradictory though. She started by being determined to walk the whole Camino, and expressed shock and looked down haughtily at others who took busses early on. However it became clear about 3/4 of the way through the book that Jane herself must have barely walked half of the 800km herself. There were sudden gaps of hundreds of kilometers that were just glossed over entirely. She finished in 3 weeks! Impossible. Very strange and very much undermined everything she had said previously. I thought she also completely undermined the personality she had described through the book by literally falling in love with a random bloke she met 36 hours earlier. From zero to a hundred like a school kid notwithstanding there being no real evidence that they had even talked much or shared any kind of common interest. Perhaps she was writing that part with the benefit of hindsight from getting together months after the Camino was done. That’s fine, but the last 3 chapters are limited to her obsession with this not very interesting guy she’d only just met who hadn’t shown any interest anyway. What happened to the storyline she had done quite well to foster up to that point? I felt it took away from any sense of consistency of message from the rest of the book.