Book Review January

My January book review features an autobiographical book which gained prevalence in 2014 when Reese Witherspoon produced and stared in the film adaptation by the same name.Coming to us in a golden period of female empowerment Cheryl Strayed presents a story, an experience which championed modern adventure and a subtle memorialisation of human emotion. Strayed has attempted and succeeded in transmitting her intensely personal and unique story in a way that deeply echoes the anxieties and pressures every woman experiences at some stage in her life. From the stigma around who she should be, warring with who she wants to be; to the pressures of a young women in her career, her marriage, her family.

For me, reading Wild for the first time at 17 was a learning curve I wasn’t entirely prepared for. How  was I, at such a young age, expected to either empathise with this woman or understand half of the experiences she had had? The simple answer was that I couldn't and didn’t, I stumbled through the PCT with Strayed trying to comprehend the power of the weather, the way she broke down and the choices she made to carry on. In reality, I glided through the pages with an ignorance that made me think I knew what heartbreak and loss and true physical pain was. Make no mistake that despite by ignorance I was not unchanged however; Wild deeply affected me the first time round just as it would three years later. I remember finishing the book and being obsessed with this tortured woman who had done something I could only, literally, ever read about. For months I romanticised and idolised the young Strayed for his frivolous life pre-PCT and then devoted myself to trying to become this woman who had made such choices yet came out the other side a changed and triumphant female. 

Coming back to the book at age 20, on the cusp on many important decisions and months of my life everything had changed. I was no longer infatuated with this story of a wayward woman who fixed herself on a thrilling and dangerous journey; instead each page made me a little more fearful than the last, fearful for me and for the young Strayed. Certain aspects of the novel I had overlooked in the past called out to me now, just as parts I had clung to when I was 17 fell back into the general plot. Working my way through the second reading I began to realise that I had not even begun my own journey through womanhood, I had barely taken the first step on my own trail no matter how vastly different it was from Strayed’s. That was one of the beautiful things about Strayed’s account though, your own life doesn't become pale in comparison or less overwhelming; Strayed only allowed you to understand that no matter what the trail looked like, be it an inclining Southern Californian path, or a slightly less rigorous stroll through a university campus, that it could still hold suffering or intense pleasure and satisfaction.

Aside from personal experience with the book I noticed upon a second reflection that the writing itself was deeply grounded and read somewhat like a hybrid Feature piece and fiction novel. Of course the plot is not something I have any right or need to comment on, as the book is a true story of this woman’s serious and painful struggle through her early twenties. I am more interested in the way Strayed extracted her subjective memories, fleshed them out into specific situations rather than just all consuming sensations, and gave her readers moments of empathy to their own encounters with people they were attracted to, people who led us off track and those who helped carry our broken bodies back on the track. As a memoirist Strayed has honed a skill for taking one persons reality and not just retelling, but allowing her reader to relive such an experience. And something like that sticks with a reader, whether they be staring into the blurry future or looking back on all the past experiences of their lives.