Review by Han26+ -- Man Mission by Eytan Uliel

[Han26+]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Man Mission" by Eytan Uliel.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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Man Mission by Eytan Uliel is a fictional part-travelogue, part-life story, narrated by a man stuck in an office job who wanted to go out and see the world with his other three male friends, whilst doing extreme outdoor sports and sampling bizarre food. During the book, the four men face major life changes which modern folk have to do, such as changing career suddenly, getting married and buying a house, and other more primal challenges which most humans have half-forgotten how to deal with nowadays, like walking fifty-five miles on a severely injured knee, coping with altitude sickness when climbing a mountain, and kayaking against strong currents on the ocean.

The book also provides an insight into the psychology of men and the sometimes unfair societal expectations placed on men these days, which is not something I often get to read about.

I liked the narrator’s down-to-Earth, slightly sarcastic sense of humour. Although his attitude towards the idea of a “Man Mission” came across as rather proud at first, he didn’t mind sending himself up - and sometimes sending the other characters up as well - which made him and his friends more relatable and likeable to me.

The author was also great at using dramatic tension in certain scenes, e.g. when the nameless narrator and his friend Sam set up their tent for the first night, and woke up in the dark surrounded by cows, he made the reader think that they might be something sinister, which made it all the more hilarious.

I also liked how the author spliced scenes where he was outdoors doing rugged, “manly” stuff with his friends, with scenes where he was with his family, doing domestic everyday stuff. It was interesting to have that balance, and to see how the characters behaved in either scenario, as it made them more rounded.

Each chapter had a couple of pertinent quotes and a hand-illustrated map at the beginning, followed by some “vital statistics” at the end, which was an efficient, attractive method of laying out the book, and also broke it up into more accessible sections. The text of each chapter started with a short paragraph describing an unlikely situation the author had found himself in, then the remainder of the chapter took the reader back in time to explain the why and how, which made me want to keep reading.

I learned some interesting tidbits about the history of New Zealand and Australia - nothing too heavily detailed, though - and I learned which places in New Zealand were used in the filming of the Lord of the Rings, and also the basic process of bullfighting in Andalusia, Spain.

The book was exceptionally well-edited. I only found eight minor errors.

There was a lot of usage of the F word, and some other swearwords. However, I understood that that was part of the author’s sense of humour.

There were a few sexist comments here and there. I got the sense that these were not always meant seriously, but were possibly parodying the macho stereotype that men are often expected to fulfil during these kinds of camping trips. (Early on in the book, the narrator confessed to being the nerdier, bookish type.) However, I didn’t like the way the narrator referred to one of his friend’s girlfriends as a bimbo, and kept implying that certain activities (hiking, dealing with injuries, talking in short sentences, and drinking beer) were only done by men. As the book went on, the sexist attitude became more prevalent and less like a joke, unfortunately. There was one scene on a bus on New Zealand’s Rail Trail where the narrator dreamed of all the men who had brought him into the world, as if they somehow spontaneously generated him without the help of his mothers, aunts, or other female relatives, and he dreamed of his son in his lap and worried about his future - in spite of the fact that he also had two twin daughters by that point. No backstory was provided for any of the men’s wives or girlfriends, apart from a short account of how they met them. A description of their looks and emotional responses - usually bad moods - was given, and that was it. They were referred to as the “Wives Committee,” and often treated like unreasonable people to be rebelled against, almost as if they were the men’s mothers, instead of their wives. There wasn’t a lot of detail about the characters’ children either, except in the sense that having children was a major achievement in life. At one point, one of the male characters referred to his friends as “pussy-whipped.”

In spite of the initial machismo, as the protagonists grew older, softer emotions and feelings started to creep in, because life happens to all of us, male or female.

I rated this book 3 out of 4 stars. It was professionally edited, and I enjoyed the male characters’ rapport with each other, and their strange, humorous adventures, but the attitude of the male characters towards the female ones often rankled. This is a good book for any adult or young adult who likes travel literature. It appears to be directed towards men, but I think women would find it an interesting read as well, if only to understand men’s behaviour better!

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Man Mission
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[KL9999]

Great review! I also enjoyed the later Man Missions more than the earlier ones. As each year passed they became more relatable and gained some much needed emotional intelligence.