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meileea's review
3.0
Once I started reading, I had a hard time putting this book down. I read the entire book cover to cover in one day.
ravuri's review
Meh, it was okay. The writing was nothing spectacular and the descriptions of the climbs were only interesting insofar as they added another viewpoint to other more eloquent portrayals.
There was also this rather uncomfortable thread that I'm not sure should have been included in the memoir. Throughout the book, Wickwire writes about loving his wife and his regret for constantly leaving her for the mountains, but we readers don't see evidence of this love, since nowhere does he depict her as anything more than the stock abandoned but stolid wife. Then, he spends his best writing lovingly describing a woman expedition partner whom he wants to abandon his wife for. There is closure only because the woman dies in a climbing accident, but how awful must it be to be the wife that has to play the modern day Penelope while Wickwire unsuccessfully chases his Circe, and then goes and tells the world about it?
There was also this rather uncomfortable thread that I'm not sure should have been included in the memoir. Throughout the book, Wickwire writes about loving his wife and his regret for constantly leaving her for the mountains, but we readers don't see evidence of this love, since nowhere does he depict her as anything more than the stock abandoned but stolid wife. Then, he spends his best writing lovingly describing a woman expedition partner whom he wants to abandon his wife for. There is closure only because the woman dies in a climbing accident, but how awful must it be to be the wife that has to play the modern day Penelope while Wickwire unsuccessfully chases his Circe, and then goes and tells the world about it?
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