Review: Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read

4.5 stars for Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read.

‘I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan.…’

This is the story of sixteen survivors; how they have suffered the plane crash, what they have done to remain alive and how their ordeal in the Andes have changed their attitude towards life. And because I have already read the book I Had to Survive, I can appreciate and understand this book in depth.

This book does well to offer the bird's-eye-view of all the goings on. The author provides a chronological order of the event, clearly depicts the occurrence of the plane crash, lays down the horrors of the aftermath and even presents analysis to break down the causes and likely culprits leading to the tragedy. However, due to the third person narration, the story coverage comes across as detached and somewhat lacking in warmth, faith and friendship among the survivors. I am also kind of disappointed that the book does not offer perspectives of the event as seen through the eyes of any or each of the survivors.


Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition
Publication date: 5 Jul 2005

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On 12 October, 1972, a Fairchild F-227 was chartered from the Uruguayan Air Force by the Old Christians Club to fly its rugby team from Montevideo to Santiago in Chile: friends and relatives of the players had bought spare places on the plane. Bad weather delayed the flight for 24 hours at Mendoza on the eastern side of the Andes; but the next morning, on 13 October, it was resumed. Flying through cloud, and losing altitude in a series of downdrafts, the plane hit the summit of a mountain and, losing the tail, tobogganed down the side of a mountain before coming to a stop in thick snow.

A number of the crew and passengers were killed instantly, but a majority survived – some of them unscathed. With its white roof, the plane was invisible from the air and after ten days the survivors heard over a transistor radio that the search by their rescuers had been called off. Unable to move because of the deep snow, debilitated by the extreme cold, and with no food, the decision was taken to eat the flesh of the dead bodies in order to survive.

Alive records from the account of the survivors themselves how they formed themselves into an ordered society, distributing tasks according to individual skills and degrees of physical fitness. Leaders emerged who had never been leaders before. All clung to life with an extraordinary tenacity and ingenuity. After sixty days, when the snow had partially melted, the designated `expeditionaries’, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, set out to cross the formidable mountain range, the Andes, and get help.

*Blurb from author's website*

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