Touching the Void
Exciting? Yes!
This is the quintessential survival story, and it is true!
In 1985 Joe Simpson and Simon Yates decide to climb the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. I am no mountaineer, but even I could spot some of their errors. The book focuses on moral issues too.
A prime one being that Simon cuts the rope between him and Joe, remember Joe is the author, causing Joe to fall into a deep crevasse. Simon takes Joe for dead and returns to base camp, where Richard has remained to watch over their possessions. Simon didn't look down that crevasse to check and see if Joe really was dead. Was it right to cut that rope? Do you sacrifice one person's life to save another, or must both die? I can understand cutting that rope....given the conditions. What I find inexcusable is that when Simon returned to camp he did not immediately get help and search parties in to look for Joe. THAT is beyond my comprehension.
Most of the time I could picture the glacial landscape. There are crevasses and ice bridges and morasses and fissures and glacial expanses, sparkling light and snow storms and it is cold and wet, freezing. I could NOT exactly picture what it was like in the crevasse as the author described it. So maybe the movie is better than the book? The author took part in the filming later in 2002.
Joe's fear, his physical pain and exhaustion, his terror, THAT I definitely felt. His hallucinations became my hallucinations. Simon corroborated with Joe in the writing of this book. Nevertheless, I did NOT feel that his words rang as true as Joe's. Simon's voice in the audiobook is narrated by Andrew Wincott. It was too slick, too quiet. No, he didn't even sound like a mountaineer. Joe's narration by Daniel Weyman was spot-on.
My gut reaction to the audiobook was that I liked it. I certainly was not going to stop in the middle, although I had to take breathers. I am a coward and couldn't sit still, it gripped me so! I liked that not many lines were spent on the medical treatments required after this escapade. I liked that there is a short epilogue covering Joe's philosophical approach to his experiences. Yes, he continued to climb mountains.
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I need a break. I absolutely cannot continue listening to Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival. It is so terrible......what happens, I mean. I cannot, cannot continue listening. Does that make it good? The two guys are crazy and stupid and not admirable and this is just too much. I also dislike movies where I want to but cannot leave at bad sections. How does everybody read this stuff and just keep their mouths shut? Why do I get so upset?
