Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest
*Starred Review* In May 2006 on Mt. Everest, veteran climber Hall was left for dead because, to his fellow climbers, he appeared to have died. But the following morning, members of another expedition found him, sitting on a rock and very much alive. Hall’s story made headlines around the world—not too many dead men walk down off the tallest mountain in the world—and now Hall, the author of seven previous climbing-themed books, tells us the full story. It is a remarkable account. Hall’s ordeal is the stuff of nightmares: collapsing from altitude sickness, slipping into unconsciousness, waking up all alone at the top of the world, left behind as though he were a corpse. As a storyteller, Hall has a tough job: to convey to the reader what was going on inside his head as he slipped in and out of hallucination until the line between fantasy and reality was so blurred as to be nonexistent. He does this with a grace and sense of drama that befit a novel: we feel we’re there with him, seeing and hearing things that can’t possibly be real. There have been a great many Everest-themed books lately, but this one stands alone, the first-person account of a climber’s journey into, and back out of, death itself. --David Pitt