Away from it all Author:Sloan Wilson 'Away from it all' is Sloan Wilson's first book of nonfiction. In it he tells what happened to him when he decided to abandon the comforts his career as a successful novelist had brought him in order to pursue a lifelong dream. On one level the book is a rollicking account of how he, together with his young and attractive second wife and their t... more »wo-year-old daughter, moved aboard a boat on which they intended to live while cruising to the Bahamas. But on a deeper and more meaningful level it is the story of a man approaching middle age who admits that he is bored with his way of life and has the courage to do something about it.
Nowhere are Sloan Wilson's magnificent storytelling skills better illustrated than in the sense of reader identification that this book evokes. Who will not recognize the problem of prosperity without satisfaction, the sense that convivivial drinking is becoming a habit, the knowledge that old friends are no longer as young and charming as they once were? And who has not thought of breaking out of the mold and trying to find happiness through a new start?Admittedly not everyone has an Irish father-in-law who can charm the seagulls out of the clouds while driving his family to distraction. Nor does everyone have a wife who will take kindly to the idea of living at sea. But many people have sons worried about the Army, daughters whose thoughts about love and marriage do not coincide with their own, and dreams of a more simple and physical life. It is Sloan Wilson's special talent that he is able to take his own feelings and experiences and find the particular in the universal and the universal in what is uniquely his own.
As the book makes clear, attempting to fulfill a dream has hazards all its own. Joy alternates with disappointment; frustration, with accomplishment. The dangers of nature, the possibility of illness or accident while at sea, mechanical failures in moments of crisis, dependence upon the honesty and help of strangers-these are only a few of the real adventures that the dreamer does not envision. But even if he did, he would not, especially after reading 'Away from it all', abandon his dream, for as Sloan Wilson and his family found out, to seek what you want and to have a goal toward which you move are the most important things in life.« less