(Knopf, $26)
“Move over, Elizabeth Gilbert,” said Karen R. Long in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Your girly, self-involved Eat, Pray, Love has a tougher, more feral sibling.” Cheryl Strayed survived a tough Minnesota childhood only to face a pair of personal calamities in her 20s. Her mother, who raised her and her brother alone, died suddenly of cancer at 45. Then Strayed’s marriage crumbled. Working dead-end waitressing jobs and dabbling with heroin, Strayed was self-destructing when she devised an unlikely potential cure: Though she’d never hiked before, she would undertake a 1,100-mile solo trek on the Pacific Coast Trail from California’s Mojave Desert to the Washington/Oregon border. It was a reckless plan, but Strayed is a “reckless, gritty, infuriating girl.” She’s also a first-rate writer, recounting her cathartic journey in sentences that “hum with energy.”
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Something about the voice of this pseudonymous author just makes her “someone you want to listen to,” said Melanie Rehak in Slate.com. Whether she’s describing her emotional breakdowns, the sun and the trees, encounters with fellow travelers, or an unquenchable longing for a Snapple, she does so with such winsome clarity that you can’t help but give full attention. By the time she reaches her physical destination, a steel-truss bridge known as the “Bridge of the Gods,” she’s tracked down “a great unspoken truth about adulthood”—that we’re obliged to persist in the face of all tragedies. As “awe-inspiring” as her journey is, the most remarkable feature of this book is Strayed’s “unflinching honesty,” said Michael Straub in NPR.org. It’s also what makes Wild “one of the most original, heartbreaking, and beautiful American memoirs to come along in years.”
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Revisionism and division: Franco’s legacy five decades onIn The Spotlight Events to mark 50 years since Franco’s death designed to break young people’s growing fascination with the Spanish dictator
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Did Cop30 fulfil its promise to Indigenous Brazilians?Today’s Big Question Brazilian president approves 10 new protected territories, following ‘unprecedented’ Indigenous presence at conference, both as delegates and protesters
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The best Christmas theatre shows across the UKThe Week Recommends Tip-top festive ballets, plays and comedies to book up now
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Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
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Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
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Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”