A review by jentang
The Wild Truth: A Memoir by Carine McCandless

3.25

it feels strange assigning a numerical rating to this book, and i want to preface my review by saying that the number of stars i've chosen to give it are absolutely not meant to speak on the quality of the book, but rather quantitatively measure my subjective feelings coming away from it - a lot of my opinions were formed with full acknowledgment of the connection i felt to the mccandless siblings due to the remarkable similarities between their relationship with their parents and mine with my own. it's not surprising that this book garners most of its reads as it did mine: through capitalizing, for lack of a better word, off the public's interest in carine's brother chris. this is an important book to pick up for anyone who wants to learn more about the true chris as opposed to the version of him sensationalized in death. it cements him as a very real person, not the untouchable man who belonged to the wild he often gets portrayed as, and shatters the hurtful narrative spun through various forms of media and the mccandless siblings' parents themselves that he came from a loving home that he discarded spitefully. nonetheless, this is carine's memoir, and chris is not the central focus. reading this was almost cathartic for me, as i, for a long period of my life, was in more or less the same position as carine, and as a child had a mindset that aligned closely with both siblings'. with our identical family dynamics, in a weird way, i felt somewhat spoken for as well whenever carine would explain the nuances of walter and billie's places in her and her brother's lives. with all that aside, i didn't find this to be a must-read. this was the story of a woman's (absolutely far from finished) life centered around her ebb-and-flow relationship with her parents. beyond room for self-identification, which admittedly can feel nice, i don't know what i was supposed to gain from this speed-run of carine's life endeavors and her seemingly never-ending relapse-type concessions with her parents. there's no shortage of people who come from dysfunctional families and who, for the rest of their lives, are forced to make it on their own all the while trying to figure out where they fall individually on the moral spectrum of tolerance towards family. i'm happy that carine had the opportunity to publish a memoir speaking on her personal experiences; she truly has dealt with a lot more than most, and i felt legitimate sorrow for her. if publishing this brought her peace, if only for speaking out against lies damaging to her brother's memory, then that's really all that matters. i suppose at the end of the day, my rating comes from my own deeply suppressed, twisted bitterness that in my lifetime i'll never accomplish what chris did, and i'll never be heard like carine; so, take it with a grain of salt.