Walking to Mercury by Starhawk. Bantam Books, 1997. Hardback, 489 pages. ISBN: 0-553-10233-8. Three stars.

A story of introspection should begin at a point within, and a story of people should begin with personal interaction; so this one does. The viewpoint character, Maya Greenwood, is a writer and the opening scene comes from her book From the Mountain. A young woman touches divinity directly, yet fears the burden that vision brings her. Likewise Maya finds herself struggling to follow her own vision up a rough and rugged track. A man once part of Maya’s past reappears in her present, and she must work through all the old issues. Her mother’s death leaves her shaken, so she packs up the old woman’s ashes and travels to Nepal in search of a suitable resting place for them. Through it all Maya strives to rediscover herself and her source of strength and inspiration.

Reading this book is like digging through a trunk in someone else’s attic. Starhawk brings us the story through a combination of plain narrative, letters, journal entries, and other tidbits strung together in approximate order. This provides a broader perspective than Maya’s alone, and I found the differences in style quite striking. The author certainly knows how to capture each character’s unique perspective and personal voice. It can produce some confusion too, but you can follow it if you read carefully, as you would listen to someone’s life story.

Walking to Mercury reads more like real life than fiction, which has both positive and negative effects. It is eminently believable and packed with gritty little details. It is also rather sordid in places. People make mistakes — small ones, large ones, stupid ones. Sometimes they manage to forgive each other and move on. Some of the plot twists actually managed to surprise me (not an easy task) and offer thoughtful options rather than the obvious, without quite breaking the contract with the reader. The worst problem stems directly from one of the greatest challenges in fiction, namely how to keep a story from wandering lost when the main character does just that. Between the piecemeal presentation and Maya’s chaotic if sometimes obsessive rambling, the story meanders quite a bit before reaching its conclusion.
From a Pagan perspective, it contains more hints and glimpses than heavy impact. While the main character experiences several powerful encounters with the divine, these stand out as little islands in a sea of insecurity. The author’s knowledge and beliefs provide a firm background so that the spiritual aspects make sense, and I thoroughly enjoyed the original portrayal of the Goddess in Her three phases, given here as the Seer, the Singer, and the Reaper. Yet I found somewhat less “going on” here than I expected. On my scale it falls in that broad borderland between “Pagan Fiction” and “Pagan Literature” because it touches on Maya’s relationship to both the spiritual realms and the modern “mainstream” society.

Not light reading by any stretch, Walking to Mercury does offer a contemplative look at middle-age shifts and surmounting the challenges of daily life. The Pagan themes are subtle but present, and you can have fun hunting for all of them. Give yourself time to savor this one slowly. It deserves your attention. Fans of Starhawk’s nonfiction will recognize many familiar elements, especially from Dreaming the Dark : Magic, Sex, and Politics and Truth or Dare: Encounters With Power, Authority and Mystery. I recommend it for Pagan audiences in general.