In the Ghost Country : A Lifetime Spent on the Edge

Rating:
Summary: Daring and unconventional approach makes it fresh
Review: I was in Australia recently for business (art dealer) and read two broadsheet newspaper reviews about this book, which I had read before heading Down Under. One said it was a ``must read'' for anyone interested in the adventure game, but ``deserves a much wider audience'' because of its searing psychological insights. It also noted ``the triumph of the book'' lies in the way the two voices complement one another. The other review said Elder (who carries the main narrative) was trying too hard to be original. The book is an original: a duet, where Elder paints the emotiional, historical and physical landscapes and Hillary speaks directly in the voice of someone telling wild tales, giving the feeling that he's right there in your ear. Elder's voice is in plain type, Hillary's in bold. The structure gives the book its pace and deepends its empotional resonance. Perhaps if the publishers had included a note to that effect for people who might struggle to get it -- but personally I don't think it's hard to figure out. If you enjoy literary intelligence, youi'll love the book -- if you like your stories straight up and down maybe you won't.

Rating:
Summary: It gave me goosebumps
Review: I'm the type of traveler who prefers a cabana on the beach to an icy plain hundreds of miles wide, but I have always loved adventure books' potential for exploring the metaphysical extremes of life.
This book does a brilliant job of communicating why some people feel compelled to leave family and friends behind to spend weeks or months in an extreme environment with nothing but an uneasy conscience for company. The language is vivid and provocative, whether describing the eerie landscape through which Hillary treks or evoking the tragedy and comedy inherent in having to pitch an adventure to potential corporate sponsors and in grappling with a famous father's legacy. Best are the passages in which Hillary is left by his companions to cross the ice alone, and is visited by the many ghosts who didn't survive their own treks across the ice or climbs up the mountain. The frequent cuts from Elder's evocative prose to Hillary's matter-of-fact reportage to excerpts from an explorers' guidebook to bits of Sartre provide a multi-dimensional experience that must resemble the actual experience of exploration more closely than most tales of adventure.
I finished this book a couple of months ago, but it still lingers in my imagination. I was so moved by it that I sent copies to several friends. Now all I can do is wait and hope for another book by this duo.

Rating:
Summary: Journey to the centre of the soul
Review: If you love a good old-fashioned gut-spill, especially by somebody with a famous name, then you'll love this book, too. It reads like you are walking through a very strange and colorful and often violent dream. Through a series of recollections in the form of hauntings, famous son Peter Hillary shares the very-high highs and the brutal lows of an extraordinary restless life. And thankfully he does it with a stoic and often very black humor, without losing respect for the people he's mourning. He admits there is a big cost in devoting your life to adventure, and one of them being cursed with a ruthless selfishness, yet in the end these almost psychedelic memoirs are a tribute to other people. It's not all about him. I also enjoyed the pacy, very tight and clever re-telling of Scott's last journey and Shackleton's wild times, as well some fascinating comparisons with other modern polar journeys that went to hell. And i love the fact that the opening two sentences make a limerick!

Rating:
Summary: Perception becomes reality!
Review: It is an absorbing trek into the mind of a great explorer, told in a "carefully" worded narrative which invokes the intended image. I actual saw the David Letterman show when Muir was the featured guest. He looked like a cross between a mountain man and a yeti,and seemed to be in good spirits considering all he had been through. I also noted on the rear cover jacket that Elder's ship the "Southern Quest" sank in the Ross Sea. I had heard that his ship actually sank at the mouth of Galway Bay with a captain Sullivan at the helm or was it Clancy I forget. Either way I heard that the captain offloaded the much needed supplies into his own lifeboat. Enjoy it, it's a well told story.

Rating:
Summary: Moving, inspiring and very entertaining. What a survivor!
Review: It seemed that every five or six pages I'd look up and say to my wife: ``Just listen to this.'' It's a bad habit of mine, and it usually drives her nuts. But with In The Ghost Country, she became as captivated as I did. The relevations are sobering and surprising, the writing is seductive and dreamy, some scenes are almost trippy in their cumulative power. I've seen Peter Hillary as a motivational speaker, and he puts on a pretty good show, with a good sense of humor, but you don't see just how much this man has been through. There's a lot of death in this book (and even dark thoughts of murder), and a lot of wonder and amazement too. But in the end Hillary chooses life, and has made the right choices under the most perilous circumstances to stay alive. He's survived where so many of his friends have not. I actually shed tears when I came to a small scene in part four, where Hillary has inched across the ice shelf and is moving up the glacier. He's been out there for about seven weeks and virtually been alone the whole time because he's estranged from his two team mates and there's only been the company of his ghosts, which is the worst kind of loneliness. On the glacier, at minus-20 degrees, he finds a tiny patch of algae miraculously growing on a rock. He writes: ``That is was so beautiful to behold had everything to do with place and time, where it was, where we were, how long it had been, how long it had been since we'd seen something fresh and green... it was like we'd discovered life on Mars.'' I suspect for Hillary it was like an affirmation of hope and a reminder to just keep going. After sharing his journeys through seven kinds of hell, I found it very moving and weird to say but a kind of consolation for my own lonely moments in the dark. We all have them.

Rating:
Summary: More to it than cutting the rope
Review: Just like Joe Simpson's Touching The Void, this book will probably become controversial and well known because of a rope-cutting incident where a climber is released to oblivion. Reviewers aren't supposed to spill the beans and spoil it for other readers, so I'll just say it makes one hell of a story. But Hillary's book is full of great stories, and the glue that holds them all together is his strung-out search for comfort and meaning on his lonely trek to the south pole. The joy for me was finding depth and revelation in each rollicking or harrowing episode. My one quibble is that there is no index. It doesn't detract from the big read, but it would have been useful when I was going back through the book, to re-read various passages. Hence I've gone against the grain and docked it a star.

Rating:
Summary: Whoa! Don't be hatin' -- this book rocks
Review: Like, dudes, what's happening? Hillary and Elder have told an amazing story in a groovy poetic way. I came away wondering why would Peter Hillary put himself through so much hardship. I learnt a lot of from In The Ghost Country and I really like it a lot.

Rating:
Summary: Where's the index????
Review: Loved the book overall, felt the writing had a very beautiful rhythm to it, found some of Elder's imagery a little baffling sometimes -- but I have to say that for such a complex piece of work, even for a work of art, it is unforgivable there is no index. It is also unforgivable that amazon allows the negative reviewers to bag the people who loved this book. apart from the one (two star) reviewer to name himself, the others have gutlessly hidden behind ``a reader'' and bagged everyone who enjoyed this work.

Rating:
Summary: Howling in the face of of the abyss
Review: Man oh man. Two journeys -- one a lonely haul to the South Pole, the other a haunting visitation to the past, as ghosts rise up to keep Hillary company. It's a thrilling concept, made more exciting that this is how the brain works under the pressures of social isolation and sensual deprivation. The son of Sir Edmund has certainly spilt his guts here. But the writing is so poetic and evocative much of what could have sunk this book is transcended. Nowhere have I read a better exploration of the interior life -- the mind -- of an adventuring man, or of any man for that matter. Hillary's partner Elder is obviouskly the genius here, not to take anything away from Hillary who has become a surprisingly more forthright writer than he was in his youth -- but it's Elder who has clearly taken the reigns here and through using two voices -- his and Hillary's -- has crafted a masterpiece of form and revelation. Certainly blows the mystique.

Rating:
Summary: A very moody and compelling read
Review: On this strange and affecting adventure story that goes to the bottom of the world, Peter Hillary uses the iron will that got him to the top of the world and other tough places to hunker down from the confronting fact that his two team mates have little time for him. They just want to the get to the South Pole, and go about it with a very business like attitude while Hillary wants companionship. He tries to get a social club going in the tent at night, and when they show no interest he increasingly retreats into memory and takes one of the biggest journeys of his life, a rich and harrowing journey into the mind. For a very driven man it's interesting and inspiring that he's more interested in how he makes the journey than bagging the trophy. He's been very generous with this book in the way he's put himself out there.