Hello Beautiful People! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I continue on my current memoir trend and jump into another. A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout came across my way quite a few years ago in a sociology class I was taking. I didn’t end up picking A House in the Sky to write my paper on but I was still super interested in the book and wanted to check it out at some point. It’s taken a pretty long time but I eventually got to it and boy is this a memoir you have to check out. I am not a very worldly person so I felt like I got to learn so much from this book, but I also feel like this would be one that well-seasoned travellers would really enjoy. So, let’s get into it!
My Review
I really enjoyed A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and given that Amanda grew up and was from an area in Canada not to far away from where I am from I felt this extra level of connection to her story and her family. When Amanda went through the experience that led to this book I was just a kid so it makes sense that I hadn’t really heard about this before, but I am sure this would have had to have been huge news at the time. I don’t want to get too much into re-telling Amanda’s story in this review because it’s a pretty traumatic one, and one that I feel deserves to be read by other people. I will say though that if you struggle to read memoirs that include topics such as kidnapping, torture, sexual assault, and murder I wouldn’t recommend checking this one out. Amanda is very raw and real in her retelling and while the book overall is fantastic it’s not particularly an easy read.
Being a Prairie girl like myself Amanda Lindhout grew up in Canada always interested in seeing the world outside of what she knew. As a small child, she would often read National Geographic to escape the difficult world that was going on around her. As an adult, her interest grew further, and with the ability to work and make her own money to travel Amanda planned to go around the world. As someone who is a huge homebody and doesn’t love to travel all that much, I really enjoyed getting to read about Amanda’s travels before she was kidnapped. It didn’t make me want to travel or anything but the way she described getting to see these different countries and areas through pure eyes was really interesting. In 2008 Amanda and a situationship of sorts named Nigel traveled to Somalia so that Amanda could continue on her freelance journalism. After being in the country for only a few days Amanda, Nigel, and two of their guides were kidnapped. Somalia at the time was in major conflict and it was an extremely unsafe place to be in due to all the unrest. Amanda having travelled to many countries labelled as dangerous, but experiencing nothing of the such, thought nothing of going to Somalia. Her family having long given up trying to convince her to stay safe are back home in Canada.
Amanda and Nigel were kidnapped with the purpose of a ransom. However in this time frame (and maybe even still now) the government was unwilling to exchange money for hostages. Given the aftermath of 9/11 ransom-based kidnappings of North Americans and Europeans were high in high-conflict countries. Given that people from low-income countries were desperate for money they would often assume that anyone from outside their area was rich, or at least worth something. Amanda and Nigel were held captive for 460 days while negotiations and talks for their safe exchange went on. Amanda vividly describes her time in captivity, how she and Nigel attempted to keep each other sane even when split up, what she got to know about her captors, and the times were things got really hard. It was really interesting to get to hear her story because I am not certain that most people would have been spared in hopes of the payout as long as she and Nigel were. The things she experienced and did to survive were fascinating, and I really appreciate the strength it must have taken to talk about her experience in this way.
Of course, given that she wrote this book I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say she lives, but I think was interesting that this book is what she needed to do, and suffer through, to live. I appreciate that in this book as well she never speaks badly about the Somali people, just her captors. She does not associate what happened to her with the country but with only the specific people who enacted it on her. Her ability to go to different countries with a fully open mind and a desire to learn and connect with other people was heart-warming to see. I think her ability to connect to people despite the language barrier is what saved her in this situation. She never was the stereotypical North American when it came to travelling and she really experienced each country and its people for what they were.
I would definitely recommend checking this one out if you love a good, well-written, and raw, memoir. Given that Amanda is just about as average as everyone else in the world there is this reliability to the book that I feel a lot of people can connect to. It was a hard book to put down once you started to get into it.
Have you read A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout before? What did you think?
Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when a new review drops!
Baddie Book Reviews 