In the Ghost Country : A Lifetime Spent on the Edge

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Summary: On the other hand!!!!
Review: This is a work of genius -- an intelligent exploration of the human mind, not a jock fest for thick wits. DOH!!!!

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Summary: Two thumbs up!!!
Review: Very interesting approach. I'm a huge fan of Into Thin Air and have read a few other books from the genre, but this one is very different. I'm not sure it strictly fits into the mould, although it is based on an expedition and it contains a lot of stories from the mountains. Personally, it was more an exploration of a shattered mind as a consequence of too much grief from adventures gone wrong. I think this is an important book.

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Summary: Did Hillary ever go for therapy?
Review: What an amazing case study of a man in disintegration. Throughout he clings on to what he believes while relying on old self-defeating patterns of behaviour to survive. Hillary apparently looked ``ancient'' at the end of the polar journey, and I am not surprised. I somehow doubt that he took his shattered psyche to a therapist's couch. I'd love to have him as a client for 12 months and see what's left of him.

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Summary: Psychological thriller underpinned by heavy memories
Review: What does my head in is the understated way the tension is drawn between Hillary and his mute team mates. So much goes unspoken, and this keeps the reader rooted while Hillary finds better companionship with the campfire he conjures up from the chuffing blue flame of the stove, and the ghosts who come to sit nearby. The other thing that keeps you hooked is how the writing starts out brisk and very engaging in the first chapters, ruled by a bleakly bemused tone, and then as the journey progresses it gets a little stranger, taking on a neat poetic shorthand that works to build the mood of a dream. Its always very affecting, because the hyper-reality of the dream state never falters

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Summary: More to it than cutting the rope
Review: When this book becomes famous, it will probably because a man hanging on a rope with three thousand feet beneath his battered form -(...)presumably dead, but none of the party can ever be totally sure -(...) is cut away and sent plummeting. It's just one of the startling stories in this book, and a distraction from what the book SHOULD be famous for.(...) for its innovative and unflinching exploration of a human mind under stress. Forget all those (...)`men'(...) books that have all these soft and embarassing theories and rituals for men to find their true inner selves.(...) In The Ghost Country lays out the brutal truth as the way it is.

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Summary: Deep, dark and beautiful -- Brother where art thou???
Review: With raw honesty, intelligence and great poetry, this book takes a real life story and rewrites one of the epic poems from classical mythology, The Odyssey.