Wild

4 of 8
Wild
By Cheryl Strayed
315 pages; Vintage Books
Seeing the first pick for the Oprah Book Club 2.0 come to life at the theater is enough to make our entire holiday this December. And it's all the more thrilling when the lead actress seems to fit the author so exactly, from her intelligence to her courage to her appearance. As Cheryl Strayed wrote on her Facebook page,"It's an extraordinary experience to see Reese Witherspoon dressed in the clothes I wore on the trail, her hair the same style and color as mine then, with my beloved/loathed Monster on her back packed just the way I packed it! I'm humbled and awed and so excited for you to see the movie!" So why go back and re-read? It's the graceful toggling between past and present in the memoir that makes the story pack such an emotional wallop. Strayed can move you from her childhood in the woods to her Brooklyn apartment to the isolated wilderness of the Pacific Crest trail in a few paragraphs—a feat that bends time as much as it suspends it.
— Leigh Newman
Published 08/28/2014
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