From the blurb..... "In April 1992, Chris McCandless, a young man from a well-to-do family, hithhiked to Alaska and walked alone in the wilderness. He had given all his savings to charity, abandoned his car and possessions, burnt all the money in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a hunter..... Jon Krakauer uses McCandless' restless rogress around the wide spaces of N America to explore the call of the wild and the mentality of those who succumb to it. What emerges from this mesmerizing, heartbreaking story is a version of the wilderness that is hard and seductive; a place where one can possibly find one's self, but also opening the dark possibility that we might find our own nature strange and disturbing."

I loved this book. The prose vividly describes the harsh Alaskan wilderness as well as exploring McCandless' motives as he travels through the US. The book explores why a intelligent young man would choose to to leave behind his privilaged lifestyle to live off what he could hunt and gather in the most rugged of Alaskan wildernesses. It is a haunting but riverting account of his trail and the people he met along the way. I had sympathy both for McCandless, an intense and idealistic young man with the urge to shun consumerism, and for his parents who he cut out of his life. Highly recommended

Reserved for Shroffland's and ApoloniaX Global Village VBB

Sent to Soffitta......enjoy!

Thanks for sending this (and the lovely bookmark).

I wasn't sure what to expect, I haven't seen the film. A young graduate walks out of his life and is found dead 2 years later in Alaska. The author tries to track down his route and discuss why he went to Alaska.

Christopher McCandless, also known as Alex Supertramp, is found dead in an old, abandoned bus two years after he set out from home. His travels take him all around the States, as he works his way north. He leaves his home and family after graduating from college, and, despite having good enough grades for law school, he gives it all up. Chris shows that this is not a spur of the moment decision, he has planned his escape well, nor does he give himself room to back out, donating his savings to Oxfam, burning money in his wallet and eventually abandoning his car.

It was interesting to see how Chris cut himself off from his family, but left a trail behind by keeping up with people he met. He sent postcards to those who helped him on his way, even inspiring one man to make his own journey. What strikes the outsider is that Chris came from a middle-class family, not an unhappy, disfunctional childhood, but, as is said in the book, Chris would have rebelled anyway. Chris left little evidence of why he left, - a diary, some postcards, highlighted passages in books - so much of the book is Krakauer reading between the lines. It must be even sadder for his family to read of his connections with others, when he severed his with them, but they must take comfort in the fact that he touched the lives of others.

At the beginning of the book, the author apologises to those that might be annoyed by his own life intruding on the text, but I felt that Krakauer's comparisons with his experiences and that of other young men helped the reader to see a wider context. McCandless is not the only man to be lured into the wild, to find a purer, simpler life, in which it is a case of man living in nature without society's pressures.

It was interesting, I think everyone has dreamed about getting away at some point in their life, but few would take it to the extreme that Alex / Chris did.

Upstairs on the window shelf.