By Cheryl Strayed
Rating: 5/5
Favourite Quotes:
“I wasn’t my mom. It was only after her death that I realized who she was: the apparently magical force at the center of our family who’d kept us all invisibly spinning in the powerful orbit around her.”
“I’d read The Dream of a Common Language so often that I’d practically memorized it. In the previous few years, certain lines had become like incantations to me, words I’d chanted to myself through sorrow and confusion. That book was my consolation, an old friend, and when I held it in my hands on my first night on the trail, I didn’t retreat carrying it one iota-even though carrying it meant that I could do no more than hunch beneath its weight.”
Thoughts: That moment when you read the perfect book, at that perfect time in your life. There is so much bravery and honesty that flows through the pages to the reader. I felt like I was beside her in her journey, feeling her pain, her hunger and her loneliness.
This is an amazing book on loss, pain, and nearly giving up. You follow the author along her hike the PCT trail as she comes to grip with her mother's death. I have read criticism for her unpreparedness and lack of regard for being ready for the trail but this is her story, this is her coping method. This is a book I will reread again.