John Brady's Weblog

I read this book some months ago, having bought it after seeing a television documentary on Channel 4 in the UK about it (see a previous blog post). Overall I liked the book and enjoyed reading about Guy's 9 months in Alaska, trying to build a log cabin himself, and the arrangements to make it all happen. The book is really just a chronological telling of all that happened to Guy since deciding he had to do something different and get out of the 9 to 5 of corporate life in a big city. No big insights as to why he had to do this - other than being sick of the 9 to 5 work in an office - nor any deep meditations on the lessons he learnt. Just a straightforward telling of what happened during the 9+ months of it all.

Generally this format worked well - a very direct telling of what happened, and often some nice details about the people and places he went. He doesn't skimp on the details of what happened - the book is over 350 pages - and he writes well, at least I thought so. The plain telling also seemed to lend a touch of honesty to it all - Guy did not seem like the kind of person who would want to dress anything up more than it was. You felt that this indeed was really what happened.

My main reason for buying the book, apart from the inspiration of such an adventure, was to find out more of the details left out of the very brief and sometimes vague television documentary. The documentary annoyed me because it left more questions unanswered than answered. Whole series of events were skipped over in the documentary. In the book Guy covers everything, so that it is very clear what happened.

The main question in my mind was "How does one inexperienced person build a proper log cabin on their own within a month, and in Alaska?". And as I expected the answer is - they get a lot of help from other people who know how to do it. Obviously the television documentary people had their own agenda, and could not leave gaps. So they painted the picture that Guy built the cabin himself. Guy is more honest in the book. He chopped down the trees to make the logs that the base would sit on. These were put in place and the floor laid by his Alaska friends, within 2 days. Then they left Guy to chop down the rest of the trees, and remove the bark from them. When they returned, the Alaskans built all the walls of the log cabin, and just left Guy to top off the roof. This entailed fitting some end posts as gables, a ridge pole, and then laying sheets of tin on top as the roof material. So the speedy build of the log cabin was down to Guy's new friends, and not his own abilities.

In many respects he was a lucky man, and this comes through in the book. It was the combinations of good luck that got Guy to Alaska, got him a log cabin, food, and even a dog team.

My only complaints about the book are that I did not get any feeling for how this changed Guy, and that Guy can be quite negative about himself at times. In the middle of reading these different descriptions of all the things that Guy has achieved in such a short period of time, he will often throw in a comment about how useless he felt and belittling himself. I was always amazed at these comments, especially in a book that I had bought to be inspired by. To be inspired by the place that is Alaska, and the man that had given up his job and left his family for 9 months just to achieve some 'dream' he had. But even when Guy seems to be achieving all that he set out to do, he cannot help putting himself down. I found this annoying, as it just did not sit with the rest of the story. If he really did not believe in himself, he would never have left his job nor gone to Alaska. I can only presume that he has some complex or other, and needed to keep putting himself down in various ways in the book.

So, a good book, well written, telling one man's story of his 9 month stay in Alaska, only marred by the author's own negative self comments.

Labels: alaska