The back cover refers to this book as an “honest and wry exploration of [Goldberg’s] own life.” Hardly. The Great Failure is instead an exploration of the author's changing perception of two men in her life -- her father and her Zen teacher, Katagiri Roshi -- and how they had hurt or disappointed her. That's fine, I suppose, but what I find terribly disappointing is that the author does not seem willing to reveal herself to the extent that she reveals the two men and their flaws (or, in Roshi's case, what Goldberg perceives as his flaws).

There are two key moments in the book when Goldberg is most vulnerable: 1) when she admits that her own marriage ended because of her endless devotion to Zen practice, and 2) when she wonders, in a single sentence, whether what devastated her most about Roshi's extramarital affair was that it was not with her. Here are two open doors to the author's heart, two points at which my own heart leaps, expecting to connect to the deep pain of one's own failure, one's own darkness. My reading eyes widen, thinking that this is where I finally get to meet Natalie the Failure, Natalie No Different Than Roshi, Natalie the One Like Me. The author gives me a peek, but she closes the door before I can enter.