8 /10 1 Votes
Language English Pages 336 pages (hardcover) Adaptations Wild (2014) | 4/5 Goodreads Publication date March 20, 2012 Originally published 20 March 2012 Publisher Alfred A. Knopf | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Country United States of America Genre Memoirs; Education and Reference Media type Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audio CD, Audible Audio Awards Goodreads Choice Awards Best Memoir & Autobiography Similar Cheryl Strayed books, Other books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is a 2012 memoir by the American author Cheryl Strayed, describing her 1,100-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995 as a journey of self-discovery. The book reached No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list, and was the first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0.
Contents
The film adaptation was released in December 2014.
Plot summary
Wild is Cheryl Strayed's memoir of her 1,100 mile solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail, beginning in the Mojave Desert and hiking through California and Oregon to the Bridge of the Gods into Washington. The book also contains flashbacks to prior life occurrences that led her to begin her journey.
At age 22, Strayed had been devastated by the lung cancer death of her mother at 45. Her stepfather disengaged from Strayed's family, and her brother and sister remained distant. Strayed started using heroin, and eventually she and her husband divorced.
Seeking self-discovery and resolution of her enduring grief and personal challenges, at age 26 Strayed set out on her journey, alone and with no prior hiking experience. Wild intertwines the stories of Strayed's life before and during the journey, describing her physical challenges and spiritual realizations while on the trail.
Distinctions and recognition
Film
By the time the book was published, actress Reese Witherspoon's film company, Pacific Standard, had optioned Wild for film rights. Witherspoon portrayed Strayed in the 2014 film Wild, which was written by Nick Hornby and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée.
Reception
In The New York Times, Dwight Garner wrote that "the lack of ease in (Strayed's) life made her fierce and funny; she hammers home her hard-won sentences like a box of nails," adding that the memoir reflected a "too infrequent sight: that of a writer finding her voice, and sustaining it, right in front of your eyes."
In The New York Times, Dani Shapiro called the book "spectacular... at once a breathtaking adventure tale and a profound meditation on the nature of grief and survival, ... both a literary and human triumph." Shapiro wrote that unlike many parallel-arc stories, Strayed's two parallel narratives—the challenging hike itself and the difficult life events that preceded it—are delivered in perfect balance. According to Shapiro, the memoir did not overdramatize its events, but followed a "powerful, yet understated, imperative to understand (their) meaning," allowing readers "to feel how her actions and her internal struggles intertwine, and appreciate the lessons she finds embedded in the natural world."
In Slate, Melanie Rehak began by contrasting Wild with the 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love—whose story was "pleasant, mild, romantic, and completely lacking urgency" and in which everything would work out. In contrast, Wild was said to be "crammed with... passages of vicious discomfort" and was carried by a voice that was "fierce, billowing with energy, precise." Crediting the years that passed between Strayed's 1995 hike and her 2012 memoir, Rehak wrote that Strayed had "fine control" over "unfathomable, enormous experiences" and never wrote "from a place of desperation in the kind of semi-edited purge state that has marred so many true stories."
By the time of the film Wild's release, in December 2014 A.O. Scott wrote in The New York Times that Strayed's memoir was "already a classic of wilderness writing and modern feminism."