Between Extremes

This book is the story of a journey and of a friendship born of adverse circumstances. The time they spent as hostages gives Brian Keenan and John McCarthy an authority which they wear extremely lightly. This contrasts with the more recent posturing of the 'Neocons' who could be said to have got the world into this mess in Iraq. There is an enviable easiness and a lack of bitterness towards their captors which gives this book a moral stature which has been lacking in more recent debate of the situation in the Middle East.

I found this a funny, emotional, fantastic and honest description of a unique country. I have lived and worked in Chile now for 8 months and similar to the style of the two mens writing; (of Chile) I love it and loath it. It is not an optimistic over the top view of all things amazing and beautiful about Chile, and for this, I feel it is more real and honest. As they say, there are things that disappointed and annoyed them about Chile and the people, yet so many times things that happily exceeded any of their expectations. Which is exactly my sentiments about Chile and their people. At times the two writers do seem emotionally overdescriptive, dragging on about how they dreamed it would be and how Neruda described is beloved country, or how their minds were blown by something seemingly unimportant. But again, the amount of times I find I can't pinpoint well enough why these seemingly minor things move me so much, these two rather differently styled writers have perfectly articulated my sentiments. Different strokes for different folks. Just as I understand why some people wouldn't/don't like Chile and others who would rave about it. I can see some people loving this book and others not.

This is a hilarious and moving tall (but true) tale about two men who had a dream and decided to go out and live it. Keenan and McCarthy came up with the idea of having a farm in Patagonia while still hostages in Beirut. Several years after their release, they decided to go to Chile and see how workable their dream was. The results were mixed but in the process, they managed to put a period to their time in captivity, learned far more about their respective heroes Bernardo O'Higgins and Pablo Neruda than they had hoped and discovered that they could still be great friends when not stuck together inside a dark, tiny room. Their travelogue is funny, frank, fractious and familiar to anyone who has traveled second-class in a country where the infrastructure is iffy. Definitely give this book a try.