Enough
Climbing Toward a True Self on Mount Everest
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- 9,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
A searching, uplifting memoir by the celebrated, groundbreaking climber: a journey of overcoming where the mountain’s highest peaks can only be reached by traversing the dark crevasses of the soul
At twenty-seven, when Melissa Arnot Reid accepted a tank of oxygen just short of the summit of Mount Everest, she felt ravaged by defeat. Driven by a relentless, lifelong quest to prove to herself, her family, and the world that she was enough, she had set herself an incredible goal—to become the first American woman to summit Everest without supplemental oxygen. The failure battered her spirit and left her struggling to keep her tenuous grip on hope.
In the candid and adventurous spirit of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Enough is a story of a life in which the most dangerous mountain faces became a refuge—until suddenly they, too, no longer seemed safe. From a childhood marked by conflict, betrayal, and predation, Reid propelled herself to the top of the mountain climbing world, summiting and guiding on the world’s most challenging peaks and establishing herself as a woman unafraid to throw elbows in a milieu dominated by men. And yet for every summit she reached, her valleys of inner turmoil—over her estrangement with the family she believed she’d destroyed as a child; over relationships that cycled through deception and infidelity—grew deeper and more self-destructive. Eventually, she could not keep these worlds from colliding, especially after a series of tragedies at dangerous elevations took the lives of her mentors and friends. Forced at last to face herself, Reid made her most perilous climb yet—toward the uncertain promise of forgiveness and self-acceptance.
A beautiful, aching memoir of a journey with life-and-death stakes on the mountain and off, Enough bares the soul of one of the world’s greatest climbers, from the rarified heights visible only at thin-air altitudes to the dark depths home to demons familiar to anyone who has struggled to find compassion for themselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Reid, who in 2016 became the first American woman to summit and descend Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen debuts with a spirited account of her climbing career. After weathering a troubled childhood in Montana, Reid fled to Iowa with her boyfriend when she was 17. There, a coworker introduced her to mountaineering, for which she displayed an immediate knack. As Reid catalogs a string of failed relationships, an abortion at age 22, and her struggles against misogyny in the climbing world, she writes rapturously of the control she felt on the mountain. A failed attempt to climb Everest without oxygen in 2010, plus the death of a sherpa on a different climb in the same year, formed a pivotal point in Reid's life and climbing career, forcing her to disentangle her relationship with mountaineering from her desires for excellence and admiration. The final section charts Reid's healing—she cofounded the Juniper Fund, an organization to support families of sherpas who have died in the field, successfully summited Everest without oxygen, and started a family, reveling in the pleasures of marriage and motherhood. This is exhilarating.
