“Wild” by Cheryl Strayed feels like the kind of book I would really like. On the surface, it is about a “badass motherfucking Amazonian queen” alone in the wilderness, conquering her demons, and purging her destructive emotions through sweat, blood, and tears. While the book was all of these things, it was also about a broken woman, graphic sex and drug use flashbacks, and undeveloped relationships with countless rad side-characters that were never developed beyond the surface. Let’s talk about how each of these flaws made an otherwise stellar idea for a book into something I might think twice about recommending.

First, the author herself. Cheryl Strayed (who changed her last name after her divorce from the man she still loves) is broken in many ways. Her mother died of cancer when she was only 45, which kick-started Cheryl into a life of rebellion and danger involving heroine and infidelity that seemed so purposeful and hateful, that I was unable to relate to her reasoning for going down that path. She claims throughout the book to still love her ex-husband (the divorce was finalized a month before the events in the book), and he still loves her as well. It seems Cheryl wanted to divorce him to punish herself and escape the responsibility of loving him. Despite numerous attempts to explain her reasoning, I wasn’t buying it. Sure, she was broken by her mother’s passing and then by her fling with drugs, but her husband was her backbone and her compass. Instead of allowing him to help her, she fled to the Pacific Crest Trail to “re-discover” herself, but only ended up back to her old ways.

And that brings me to my next qualm with this book: the author’s overt reliance on extrinsic validation from men and drugs. I mean, wow … it seems Cheryl is unable to separate her self-worth from the opinions of others or from her addiction to illicit drugs. I noted an exceptionally jarring phrase from early in the book that exhibits Cheryl’s thought process perfectly: “his words were as soft as his penis in his pants.” … Let that sink in. Who writes/thinks like that? This was the first clue the reader gets that the author is “thirsty,” and the clues (both obvious like this one, and not as much) keep coming throughout the book. The author uses this phrase to indicate how her mind thinks when in the presence of someone she wants to fuck and she believes does not have an interest in her (because of his soft penis). I want to believe this phrase is purposeful, because if it’s not, it’s just bad writing. She sees men as objects, almost always describing them based on whether or not she would like to sleep with them. It gets to be disturbing at times, such as when she is hitching a ride and immediately clocks the male passenger, a tattooed, burly man, as someone she wants to see naked. I’m really bamboozled by her thought process… Do other women really think like this? To be completely honest, I was surprised she included this particular character trait if she never grew from it. Though Cheryl evolves a lot throughout this book, she never outgrows her obsession with fantasizing about men. I could forgive her obvious objectification of men in the beginning of the book because I expected her to grow out of it, but when she did not, I was disappointed. What was the point of all the sex and drug fantasies if she never evolved as a person and a character in her own book?

Okay, moving past that … Cheryl’s journey on the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) leads her to encounter numerous wacky and memorable characters. The majority of these people are never explored beyond a single character trait or become anything more than odd intermissions on Cheryl’s hike. I would have loved to see how Cheryl’s interactions with people so different than herself taught her something or helped her grow in her own journey. Instead, their fleeting presence left me feeling underwhelmed. Perhaps though, this was the point as the characters Cheryl met along the way were only a fleeting presence for her as well. Their appearance and disappearance is how she experienced them on the trail, and so it is how the reader experiences them as well.

Oh yeh … and I absolutely hated the scene during which Cheryl’s mother’s horse, Lady, was “put down” in the most inhumane way possible. Cheryl talks about this incident as if she were a victim herself, which is disturbing. She had enough money to buy heroine, but not enough to pay a vet to properly euthanize her mother’s horse, her pride and joy? The scene is grotesque and horrifying. If the author spent half as many pages grieving for and asking forgiveness for her slaughter of Lady as were spent on her infatuation with destructive drugs and dysfunctional men, I would have accepted the brutality of Lady’s murder. As it was, however, the horse’s death was merely mentioned in passing on the way to another story about men and drugs. Clearly, Cheryl has a lot more demons of her past left to deal with.

Overall, I like this book in all the ways it is a metaphor for the journey from one’s old life to a new life, carrying the weight of all your baggage, but learning how to unburden yourself along the way. However, because the author’s character flaws and awkward, graphic, flashback-laden writing left a bad taste in my mouth, I would hesitate before recommending this book to just anyone.

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Created Sep 29, 2019 at 10:07am • Submit your own review...