ENOUGH

A trailblazing female mountaineer examines the interior work behind the scenes of her success and notoriety.

In 2016, Arnot Reid became the first American woman to successfully summit and descend Mount Everest without using supplemental oxygen. It was her sixth summit of the mountain, with three additional attempts over the preceding eight years; that no other American woman beat her to that milestone over the years of her attempts demonstrates the author’s singularity. More than 25,000 feet above sea level is not an obvious place to confront a sense of failure. Yet in the opening chapter of her memoir, Arnot Reid discloses the pervasive self-doubt that has shadowed her accomplishments. Over the course of her text, she returns to feelings of insecurity and envy, rooted in childhood pain and exacerbated by the rarity of being a female climber and guide. Tales of physical discomfort and interior drive yield space to the psychological obstacles that the author works to overcome; even the idea to attempt to summit Everest without oxygen comes almost from left field, and some of her inspirational feats are relegated to her footnotes. The details of Arnot Reid’s restlessness remain fuzzy; she communicates the weight of her desperation without fully explaining it, and the string of romantic relationships that anchor the narrative for Arnot Reid’s interior journey serve not only to obscure her excellence and dedication, but also to undermine her insistence on distinguishing her climbing success from her romantic entanglements. But as she sketches the shape of a void between who she is and who she longs to be, one cannot help but cheer her on in crossing that divide in fits and starts and wrestling repeatedly with the idea of where—and to whom—she belongs.

An endearing memoir about how to seize hard-fought freedom to become the best version of yourself.