Traces of Thoreau: A Cape Cod Journey

by Stephen Mulloney

Release Date: June, 1998

Edition: Paperback

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Didn't work for me.

"Traces of Thoreau" is a pretentious, self-congratulatory narrative, and rather a bore as a result. For this reviewer, it failed both as a personal story and as a descriptive work about Cape Cod.

The author just isn't as compelling to us as he clearly finds himself. (I strongly disagree with the editorial reviewer who said that Mr. Mulloney largely "absents himself from the narrative." It just isn't so.) Although he fancies himself a modern "H.T.," there's nothing particularly insightful about Mr. Mulloney's walk on the beach, which unfortunately leaves Cape Cod shortchanged as a subject. The book does contain some informative passages about natural history, but there are some great guidebooks that are much better in that regard.

This book would best have been kept as a personal journal. You know, the kind that gets tossed out when it is reread it in a few years and found embarrassing even to the author.

For really fun and insightful travel/nature writing, try Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods"!

Outstanding and erudite

Boston area readers should check out a review by a local columnist for a Dedham paper that in itself is a masterpiece in that it places Thoreau's book among the greats of late 1800s.