How did this guy live? Harrowing.

Two acquaintances climbing a big mountain in Peru. One falls and breaks his leg high up on the mountain. It's a death sentence. Or is it?

He partner puts up a fight to try to save him. A must read. ( )

We all have bad days. But if you read TOUCHING THE VOID by Joe Simpson not "only" will you have experienced a jaw-droppingly thrilling true story of grit and survival, you'll also – no matter how bad things ever get for you – be able to say to yourself: 'Well, at least I'm not desperately trying to make my way down one of the world's most dangerous mountains alone, with a broken leg, without food or water or shelter, with no hope of rescue because all my friends think I'm dead.' It's not a book for fans of Boney M, I guess. For everyone else I'd say it's essential. ( )

Exciting and memorable story, moderately well told. The frequent references to "the voice" got on my nerves. ( )

As another review of this book once pointed out, Touching the Void is, in itself, its biggest spoiler. We know that both brothers survived their ordeal, because they lived to write a novel! This is a story of survival against astronomical odds, but I have extracted bigger feelings of ‘wow, what a struggle’ from books where the main characters didn’t go through half as much as Joe Simpson. Am I inhuman because by halfway through the story I had been swallowed by an overwhelming sense of apathy?

Although this book has been highly acclaimed, some novels just don’t click with certain people, and this was the case with Touching the Void and I. Having spent many hours trying to analyse why this was, I have deduced that this book completely failed to hook me. When a book only has ‘heart-stopping’ adventure going for it, and it somehow fails to stop its reader’s heart, then suddenly it becomes pointless and boring.

There are also disadvantages of writing about a true story like this one, (however exciting it may be.) For one, reading this book is a little like being on the mountain with the two brothers; you can’t fast-forward through the repetitive climbing bits to get to the real excitement. If Touching the Void were a fictional story, Joe Simspon would no doubt have omitted lots of the pages he spent going from point A to point B, and working his way around difficult areas of rock. As it is, Joe does not actually break his leg until fifty pages in, and fifty pages is a long time to wait for any sense of story-driving complication.

For the right kind of person, however, I imagine this book could be quite enjoyable. It paints clear pictures of landscapes, complete with atmospheres: suspenseful, joyful, despairing. The ideal person to read Touching the Void would be a mountain climber, as anybody not familiar with the obscure terminology has to keep flicking to the (incomplete) glossary at the back, which rather detracts from the experience.

Overall, with its exciting chapter titles and true-story appeal, this book wouldn’t be too bad a way to spend an afternoon – you just have to give it to the right person. The person who gave it to me made a mistake. ( )

I finished this book in two days. I just wanted to see how it happened - how did he survive. I've read other mountaineering books, but few are as personal. Joe Simpson did not hold back or hide the real emotional experience. He describes the moments of panic, the pain, and seemingly endless confusion and disorientation. It was a remarkable story of luck and the pure will to survive. ( )