Customer Reviews

Touching the Void: The Harrowing First Person Account Of One Man's Miraculous Survival

5 star:		(104)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

An amazing tale of courage, fortitude, and a desire to live, despite dire circumstances. The author, Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, ascend a perilous section of the Peruvian Andes. Near the summit, tragedy strikes when Joe, up over 19,000 feet, falls and hits a slope at the base of a cliff, breaking his right leg, rupturing his right knee, and shattering his right heel. Beneath him is a seemingly endless fall to the bottom. Simon reaches him but knows that the chances for Joe to get off the mountain are virtually non-existent. Yet, they fashion a daring plan to to do just that.

For the next few hours, through a snow storm, they work in tandem, and manage a risky, yet effective way of trying to lower Joe down the mountain. About three thousand feet down, Joe who is still roped to Simon, drops off an edge, and finds himself now free hanging in space six feet away from an ice wall, unable to reach it with his axe. The edge is over hung about fifteen feet above him. The dark outline of a crevasse lies about a hundred feet directly below him.

Joe couldn't get up, and Simon couldn't get down. In fact, Joe's weight began to pull Simon off the mountain. So, Simon was finally forced to do the only thing he could do under the circumstances. He cut the rope, believing that he was consigning his friend to certain death. Therein lies the tale.

What happens next is sure to make one believe in miracles.

This is not primarily an adventure story about climbing. It is an account of one man, not just facing the abyss but being in the abyss and having his very being stripped to a raw struggle, not to survive but to want to survive.

Simpson and a climbing partner in an excess of youthful bravado planned a new route up a monster Andean peak in Peru. The area was remote and civilization was somewhere else. After an arduous ascent, Simpson fell and broke his leg while descending. The reader gradually realizes what a chilling horror has befallen the pair. They have no possibility of rescue; the mountain was almost unclimbable for two superb athletes with two good legs. How can they possibly get down when one of them is unable to walk?

Partner, Simon Yates, ropes Simpson to himself and tries to guide Simpson down who is forced to crawl, slide, and inch himself forward. Then Simpson goes over the edge of a cornice and is dangling with only the rope holding him over the void. Yates heroically digs in, but gradually he himself is being inexorably drawn to the chasm. He finally, with shuddering reluctance, cuts the rope, and Simpson falls many feet into a crevasse.

The rest of the book is Simpson's six-day excruciating journey down the mountain: his thoughts, hallucinations and agony. Simpson is a powerful writer without a trace of self-pity. He doesn't try to impress us with his stoicism - far from it, at times he is almost mad with fright. There is nothing lurid here; the book is exhausting, but thought provoking. You won't forget it easily, and you cannot help but wonder what it is like beyond the edge and into the maelstrom.

How far can the human body be pushed before total collapse? What can the mind endure before succumbing to what seems like inevitable termination? Joe Simpson's tale of survival after what should have been a fatal mountaineering event begins to explore the limits of human capability. Readers in our book group felt the prose was not first rate but written well enough that few wanted to put the book down. This book is good enough to become canon in mountaineering literature. For those with no mountaineering experience, some of the climbing aspects and descriptions may be difficult to envision. Nonetheless it is an amazing story. Our group read this in conjunction with Caroline Alexander's book "The Endurance", another incredible story of survival against unbelievable odds. While Simpson's ordeal occurs over the span of a few days, the story of Shakleton's group living on the ice for nearly two years explores the other spectrum of what it takes to survive - the two stories seem to compliment each other in the scope of human endurance.

A good many books and short stories have been written about mountaineering accidents and tragedies. Every bookshop worth its salt will have at least one or two to chose from, but if this one is on the shelf - get it! This is a tale which will grow on you as you turn each page, compelling you to read on and on to its breathtaking conclusion. Simpson nearly died the first time, but there was worse to come. The author has made no attempt to glorify the story, nor alter the facts to shed a kinder light on his own thoughts and words, or the actions of his partner. This book is not just an account of a human tragedy on a mountain; it is a journey into the depths of a man's soul. It is as much about philosophy as it is about mountaineering, but don't let that put you off - it's a real heart thumper!

`Touching the Void' is the story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates who climbed the West Face of Siula Grande, a mountain in the Peruvian Andes. After an accident Simpson has a broken leg and little chance of getting off the mountain alive. Yates lowers Simpson off the mountain quickly (as they do not have enough supplies to stay on the mountain) and unknowingly off a cliff face. Simpson cannot beck up the rope and Yates cannot pull him back up. Seconds before being pulled off the face of the cliff himself Yates cuts the rope and Simpson falls off the cliff and down the mountain. Yates, leaving the mountain the next morning, thinking Simpson dead, leaves Simpson to crawl off the mountain with his injuries.

In the best portions of the book you get both Yates's and Simpson's thoughts about the accident, where they were and what was happening step by step in the days following the accident. You feel the pain, guilt, fear, and panic in both parties and get the idea that something fantastic occurred on Siula Grande.

I say you get the feeling because in the poorer portions of the book you do not understand why one `crevasse' is worse than another, why a `pear shaped cornice' is a bad omen, why it is hard to place a `friend' in a secure position on the mountain, and why a `bollard' is dubious. In Simpson's words one portion of the mountain blends into the other and you have to be told this portion is scary, or that he is making progressing, rather than seeing why he is scared or how he is making progress.

Simpson admits as much in the Epilogue to the book when he says `I simply could not find the words to express the utter desolation of the experience' and to be fair Simpson was not an experienced writer at the time of this book (he has written six since then). However, you are certainly left wanting for a description you can understand, and emotion that stands out from the rest, and a story you can grasp on to instead of feeling that `you needed to be there'.

This might not apply to American readers (or it may, I don't know) but there's a huge misconception in the UK as to what this book is about. I work in a bookshop and we're selling this by the dozen, which infuriates me not because I do not believe it should sell well and be widely read, but because people are buying it for the wrong reason.

Touching the Void is, simply put, the story of the human spirit's ability for survival against all the odds. There are many occasions where both Joe and Simon could have given up; many moments when it could all have been for naught; but they kept going, and both lived to tell the tale. Simpson's writing is, as ever, vivid and visceral, putting you up on Siula Grande with him. We vicariously experience his time in the crevasse, his efforts on the glacier, and then his crawl back towards the camp, wondering if there will be anybody there even if he does make it. You know all along that he survives, but when he reaches safety you want to cry out because he describes it so painfully well. This is what the book is about.

With the impending release of the movie, and widespread radio coverage in the UK featuring interviews and editorials, a terrible misconception has crept in. Almost everyone who has come into the shop and asked me about the book has said, "I heard about this book on the radio. It's about a climber who cuts the rope on his friend. Do you have it?" By focussing on Simon Yates' cutting of the rope, it seems that everyone is missing the point. Far from a cold-hearted act, everybody fails to acknowledge that had Yates not lowered Simpson down several thousand feet of the mountain, a non-stop feat of incredible courage and fortitude, Simpson would not have survived, period. Simpson himself does not blame Yates for his actions, and this is the lead we should be taking. All these people who have never been on a mountain in their lives saying, "Ooh, he broke the code, he shouldn't have done that," just have no idea.

I'm glad the book is selling well, and deservedly so, but I wish it could sell for the right reasons and not because people want the inside story on The-Man-Who-Cut-The-Rope.

This is a true story of a mountain expedition in the Andes where two British partners take risks acceptable to experienced and fit climbers. But here they draw a spectacularly bad hand - first with Joe having a terrible bone crunching accident that leaves him scarcely able to move, and then with rapidly deteriorating weather. Partner Simon attempts the impossible and begins an inventive, courageous one-man rescue operation, but half way down the mountain he is forced to make a ghastly choice: stay roped to Joe and both will perish, or cut the rope and make a desperate bid to reach the bottom.

Simon chooses the latter, and the result is horrifying: with Joe plunging into a deep crevasse with no way of climbing up the sheer ice.

But of course this memoir is written by Joe so we know that somehow, against all odds, our author will also get himself to safety. How he does so, and how he skirts around the very edges of death provides the book with its extremely powerful human resonance.

I read this after seeing the excellent movie, and Joe's reflections, at the end of this book about the experience of helping make the film and reliving the horror (he and Simon are played by actors in wide shot, but the climbers provided all the close-up technical shots)- provides additional and unexpected depth and humanity.

There's another reviewer below who was bored by this book. They must have been having a really bad day because Joe's writing takes you right into the heart of his ordeal. This is a stunning story. Five stars aren't enough.

A few weeks back, in search of something good to watch at the video store, I picked up Kevin Macdonald's Touching the Void documentary from the shelf. As I was skeptically reading the back of the DVD case, the fellow standing next to me said that it was a "really good movie." I took him on his word and later disovered a movie that I have since been raving about to all who will listen. It is a riveting story in which an injured climber is left for dead on a Peruvian mountain and manages to crawl his way off. It sounds like fiction, but, as is often the case, this true story is incredible beyond what a writer could believable construct. So, when I found out that Joe Simpson (the climber left on the mountain) had written a book, Touching the Void about his harrowing adventure, I knew I needed to read it.

The movie and the DVD extras take the viewer on an emotional path where one at first dislikes the arrongant and impetuous Simpson, while his climbing pal Simon Yates seems more sympathetic. However, as the movie continues and especially if you watch the Return to Siula Grande DVD extra, it becomes hard not to empathize with Simpson's reaction to returning to the place where he had faced so much trauma and to, in contrast, find Yates cold and unfeeling, as if the experience they shared so many years before no longer affected him personally. The end of the movie leaves one with the impression that Simpson, although understanding at what Yates did, does not really like Yates and does certainly not consider him a friend.

The book, written several years earlier, certainly leaves a more positive impression of Yates. While Simpson admits to having written the book in part to clear Yates's name in the climbing communitry, his storytelling takes the reader beyond a defense of Yates's actions. In fact, Simpson's description of Yates's attempt to lower the injured Simpson down the mountain portrays an act that is nothing short of heroic. It is clear that his cutting the rope was a last, desperate resort to end a situation in which there was no way out.

While the book and the movie both tell very closely the same story, reading the book and seeing the movie is neither a redundant experience nor an exercise in detecting differences in the two plots. In fact, the one enriches the story in the other. The maps and the first-person telling in the book complement the documentary-style script and the sweeping vistas caught on film.

Ive done some climbing, traveled and climbed in the Andes and read many climbing books and this book is outrageous. I guess there are not many tales being told from that close to the edge (the authors tend not to survive). Stay alive Simpson and give us more of your writing. You are absolutely no bs.

(congratulations on a spectacular first ascent)

I like this type of story a lot. In old Outdoor Life they used to be called "THIS HAPPENED TO ME.." (caps intended). I always hate it when they take some hardship like being stuck in the car for a couple of days without water and make each tick of the clock seem like the end of the world. This book is the linear opposite. The hardships come through, but the writing is almost never sensational- it is understated if anything. It begins at a leisurely pace, much like the journey of Joe Simpson and his climbing partner Yates. As the tension increases we know the big Accident is around the corner, but when it finally happens it seems routine, and Simpson makes evident how fragile life can be- that a pretty simple turn of events can have disatrous consequences. I suppose it's no spoiler, since we know he wrote the book, to let it be known that he survives a broken leg and a 100 foot drop above 19,000 feet, and manages to crawl his way back to camp when everyone thought he was dead. For a first-time author he does a tremendous job of relating this story, and it is even more realistic without the touches of a ghost writer or heavy handed editor.

It's hard to find a real weakness, other than the story itself doesn't seem to totally capture what must've been the sheer horror of the journey, and the dialogue and characters are not quite as sympathetic as one would expect, probably due to some first person modesty. In any case, this is a minor complaint, and I highly, highly recommend this book for anyone who likes adventure/outdoor literature.