This is a fascinating look at Transcendental Meditation and enlightenment. I don't know much about meditation other than the most basic knowledge, so I was interested in reading about how a child grew up in the culture and returned as an adult, learning how to cope and how to grow and change, both as a mother and as a women and a wife.

Since the book is a memoir, there is obviously some information about her family history, but the book is mostly about the TM movement and its founder, but it's also to a certain extent a coming of age story. There's a lot of suffering here, but mostly it's about Claire's loneliness, something I think we can all relate to.

While this is a great memoir and is very well written, I did have a few issues with it. I felt Claire really skirted the truth about a lot of issues - she brought up some subjects / controversies, but really didn't dive into them - again, this book is a memoir and not a tell all, but in books like this I always say the same thing - why bring up the subject at all if you aren't going to delve into it?

I also didn't care for the ending, where Claire really glosses over the last few years of her life, only very briefly mentioning her time with her father / late teen/early adult years. Considering this book was supposed to be a contrast between her youth and her adult years, this was disappointing.

All in all, an interesting read about a subject I knew little about.

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received book from author as part of a book tour