This book’s appeal has me puzzled. Strayed is not very sympathetic—and I don’t mean the part about her being an adulterous drug addict. Despite the dramatic circumstances of her life and hike, there is nothing visceral about this book; it’s oddly flat and blasé. The writing itself is blunt, often ugly, and annoyingly accented with tenth grade vocabulary words.

It’s not that Strayed seems unusually awful. In fact, she seems ordinary. She is generally inconsiderate and lacks insight. She is prideful and disdainful in ways that are very common to people in their twenties who have a tattoo (c.f. she dismisses another female hiker as “too mainstream” for her smack-and-Faulkner stylings.) She admires nature in an offhand, uninformed way.

Theoretically, I like that people have found resonance with this book. We could all use a little redemption, after all. And it’s progressive that a woman can have seriously dangerous dalliances and still end up championed by Oprah and a million carpool moms. But I was expecting some warmth or guts or animation to poke through at some point. All I saw was a struggle that fit nicely into a book proposal.