Okay, that's a little more interesting, but unfortunately the full impact of these momentous choices is lost in an unblazed forest of vague, unremarkable prose and confused chronology, making it hard to give a damn. As a result of her grief, she lost all impulse control and sabotaged her marriage to a really wonderful man, then started using heroin. Not particularly different from the experiences of many people I've met. Or if her life does contain those things, she's not a good enough writer to make the reader feel it.īrief rundown: Strayed lost a loving parent with whom she had a great relationship, and had a very difficult time accepting that loss. Cheryl Strayed's life doesn't, so far, have an unusual amount of sadness or tragedy or inspiring moments - the kind of things that make for good memoir reading. Otherwise, this book just doesn't have all that much to offer. Also, the scene where she recalls how the horse is 'put down' was particularly affecting. I was particularly impressed with her ability to share her weird dreams about killing her mother, which were raw and real and touching and disturbing. That bonus star is for the first couple of chapters, which do in fact pull a person in, and which do share some impressive openness on the author's part. I dug into this book eagerly, but within a few chapters my enthusiasm began to deflate, and by the end I was basically doing this at every other paragraph:Īfter some cooling-off time, I gave it what I feel is a very generous two stars. And I really wanted to love it! I'm a backpacker, and I've often fantasized about doing the PCT solo (a pretty stupid idea for anybody who's not much more experienced than I am.) I was excited about a memoir of one woman's experience on the trail.

I gave myself plenty of time to cool off before writing this review, because man, was I ever pissed at this book by the time I finished reading it. EDIT : I changed this from two stars to one, because I realized that it's been about two years since I read this book and I still get ragey and fist-shakey just thinking about how much it sucked.

Wild pct book