Rating: 2/5
You know what? I really, really enjoyed this book.
For about 5 chapters.
And then, I realised Laurence Shorter is a privileged ignorant fool and every chapter made me more infuriated with him.
There's a lot of reasons I came to this conclusion, but largely it was for the way he talked about Zara. He was patronising and controlling and he never listened to what she wanted or needed. And the fact I can say this when the book was written from his point of view goes to show that he saw nothing wrong with the way he behaved to her. He wasn't just jealous, but acted like Zara belonged to him - even when she said that she didn't want a monogamous relationship.
Shorter also began to sound pretty racist and elitist. He's very judgemental about the people he meets from poorer areas or with different spiritual beliefs, and some of the phrases he used to describe them made me cringe as I listened. This wasn't helped by the narration from Mark Perry who attempts to put on the accents of Shorter's interviewees, which came across more inappropriate than anything else.
Honestly this ended up feeling like the story of a man in love with a woman who didn't love him, who then got depressed when his journey didn't lead to some epiphany moment where she fell in love with him. He went home after two years and thought his friends would disown him because he didn't write his book...he spent two years meeting incredible people and I'm at a loss to explain how he doesn't have more to offer. The interview were the only thing that kept me going.
They were fascinating. There was such a mix of people and opinions that it was hard not to engage with them - even with Shorter's irritating commentary. There was a lot of different views on optimism from across the world; some were connected to spiritual systems, some were based on the corporate world, some were about embracing everything life throws at you. There's probably a form of optimism for everyone in this book.
I did think Shorter was witty to begin with - in fact, at times I questioned whether I was reading too much into it and he was actually being sarcastic or ironic. Maybe I wasn't meant to be taking him seriously.
But then he'd go and interview someone else and dismiss their views because they didn't exactly align with his. So yeah, he didn't impress me when I was so interested in the interviews.
In fact, my lasting image of him is that of an egotistical megalomaniac who got hung up on a woman who was romantically uninterested in him. My advice is don't read this book.