Publisher's Synopsis
'A Plumber's Progress' is a wry, comic, self-effacing and yet impassioned account of the author's attempts to find a route to happiness and self-acceptance. He tries what has become a fairly traditional method for dissatisfied, spiritually questioning Westerners - a physical journey to the East. He climbs a sacred mountain in Tibet; this after ten years of living and working in an ashram in New York. The story is part travelogue, part spiritual quest, part autobiography. Its appeal lies in the acknowledgement that the deeper questions about mortality and meaning also afflict so-called 'ordinary' people in their daily lives, not just intellectuals and philosophers. O'Connell has a gift for understatement, and has a lovely, often unusual descriptive talent which ranges from the lyrical, to the sharp, to the very funny. Much stands out as memorable. His journey is told in a warm, humorous fashion without sentiment - his honesty is refreshing. For those who have travelled to Tibet, it will be vividly realistic and accurate, and engaging and enjoyable for the rest of us armchair travellers.
