A House in the Sky, A Memoir; Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett

Cvr9781451651720_9781451651720_hrOnce in awhile I read a book that I just can’t put
down.  I stayed up until almost 130 a few
nights just to finish the book. 

I had read about A House In the Sky in all the magazines
that came out in September; Elle, Vogue, etc. 
It is the story of a young woman, Amanda Lindhout, who is kidnapped and held for ransom in
Somalia. 

She finally told her story to a journalist, Sara Corbett, who she connected with through colleagues a few years later.  The book
is really well written and flows easily. 
It begins when Amanda was a young girl so the reader can learn about the life she grew up
in that perhaps influenced the decisions she made later in life.  Her parents were divorced and her
mother ended up with a slew of not very nice men who lived with them.  Her father came out of the closet and lived
with a guy and she visited them often. 
She went from a house that was stable, her father, on the weekends to her Moms
house that was frenetic and always on edge. 
Money was tight.  She spent time
coveting National Geographics with this dream that she would travel the globe at one point.

Eventually she began to travel.  She would make enough money as a waitress in
high end clubs and then take off anywhere from a few months to a year.  She became bolder on where she would go as
the years continued.  There are many
other travelers, like herself, that she met and knew on the road.  Eventually she began to write and take
photographs and get paid as a journalist including media stations. Even though
she traveled everywhere she was naïve.  She
was a free spirit that didn’t really educate herself on the politics of each
country. She felt invincible. 

She ends up going to Somalia thinking that she could take
great pictures and write about something that would be a game changer for her
career.  Instead she gets kidnapped with a
prior boyfriend after being there for only two days.

Amanda ended up being held for ransom for a year and a
half.  The story shares all the thoughts
going through her head, the terrible things that happened to her, how the body
dislocates from the mind in terrible circumstances.  It is an unbelievable story.  It is truly amazing she is alive today.  It took her years to recover.

Highly recommend the book. A story of courage and resilience.

Comments (Archived):

  1. AMT Editorial Staff

    Just noted it GG. You’ve been a good lead on worthwhile reads. Our “no flake, low maintenance” book club just finished “Before the Rain” — a memoir. Good. Not wonderful, but certainly very well written and interesting. Coincidentally our current read is also a memoir, Slakey’s “To the Last Breath. A Memoir of Going to Extremes.” We are barely into it, but so far, very entertaining. Slakey is/was a Georgetown Physics Prof.

    1. Gotham Gal

      will take a look at both. thanks!two boys kissing was amazing and i still can not get it out of my head. great read for a book club.

      1. AMT Editorial Staff

        We will note that too. We just started our “7th round” and it has 17 books!!! So it will be over year before we vote on a new crop. BUT we do vote based on a weighted approach. No member can have read the book prior. Good writing is prioritized.

        1. Gotham Gal

          good writing should always be prioritized!

  2. LE

    I wish there was an easy way I could buy this book for my wife and have it appear on her kindle as a gift. (I don’t use the kindle and I don’t have access to her account.)I could just buy the physical book from amazon and have it shipped to the house but I think she would want the kindle version and I’d rather just surprise her with that.

  3. Geoff

    Great write up so I thought I would buy it for my Kindle here in the UK. Guess what, Amazon expect me to wait till This title will be auto-delivered to your Kindle on 3 April 2014. What a crazy world we live in 🙁

    1. Gotham Gal

      that is absolutely crazy. i will buy you a hard copy and give it to you when you are in nyc!

      1. Geoff

        Many thanks, what an excellent idea 🙂 However, I’m currently pedalling from Cambridge, UK to The Black Sea http://geoffjones.com/2013/… so not a lot of space for books.This is how book publishers make normal folks use bittorrents. You would have thought they would have learnt something from the music industry…

        1. Gotham Gal

          U would have thought