Geography of Heaven by Rory MacLean – soul-searching journeys into the afterlife

From an ashram in India to an ayahuasca ceremony in Peru, a travel writer searches for meaning after the death of his wife In this moving, sometimes grandiloquent grief-memoir-cum-travelogue, Rory MacLean pairs an affinity for new-age thinking with a habit of loftily holding forth (“none of us are created for naught”, “love can but lead to truth”) and a proclivity for arresting one-liners (“I watched gods walk on fire”). In his search for meaning in the five years after his wife’s untimely de...

By Kathryn Bromwich