ALIVE!

[expatinscotland]

am re-reading this.

Whoa!

They don't spare any details, so it's not for the faint-hearted, but I'm again so struck by their sense of community and their incredible faith.

And to know that, even now, they are all still friends.

yes i did too

i read it years and years ago, when recovering from the flu.

was a bit shocked then, how they just went no-holds barred and didn't hide anything about what they'd done.

and the families of those who they ate supported them. there was no anger, only hapiness that not everyone had died.

and i'm wondering if there'd ever be that kind of sense of community again, even though it was only 30-odd years ago.

I loved this book even though it was so graphic. The film didn't show a lot of the physical practical issues and the meat eating was therefor harder to comprehend.

The flower bit (trying not to spoil) at the end was so we well written and had me in bits reading it. Film didn't do it justice.

I read this years ago too, and again many times over the years.
They were all devout Catholics and drew comparisons with taking the body of Christ at communion.
I don't think they could hold back details once the journo's had taken the pictures of the (how to put this nicely?) bones and remains around the site of the plane.

I do actually remember the actual news of this breaking all those years ago (I'm ancient), and at the time I thought that a plane had crashed, they'd all munched on a couple of legs and been rescued a couple of days later. So the book came as a bit of a shock and makes us realise what humans can do when our survival insticts kick in.

No doubt the families would be sueing everyone if this happened now.

They were having to eat people far longer than a couple of days.

And once the avalanche hit, they literally had to eat their friends.

They discussed how they felt, after the avalanche hit, whilst some of them were still buried.

I don't think they'd have hidden what they did, even without the journos.

But their faith was really striking and how they stayed together and didn't allow differences to kill them.

I think today the families would have sued and the guys would have turned against one another.

Sadly.

the weird thing is, it wasn't even God who got them through.

it was the Rosary.

I am Catholic (ok lapsed) and the rosary is just a way of counting prayers - to God.
So they thought it was god that got them through, apart from the boys that actually walked through the andes for help - they thought it was their efforts with gods support, that got them through.

they say the rhythm of the prayers gave them strength, and that the Holy Virgin helped them get back to God, because they questioned how God could kill their friends in that avalanche after they'd gone through what they had.

have just seen this thread! I read this a couple of years ago abd thought it was excellent and very moving. The film is good but only tells half the story. It's on my (very long) list of things to re-read.