The Way Home

Author Mark Boyle
Narrator Gerard Doyle
Publisher Blackstone Publishing
Run Time 8 hours and 37 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Alternative and renewable energy sources and technology, Assertiveness, motivation, self-esteem and positive mental attitude, Biography: science, technology and medicine, Conservation of the environment, Nature and the natural world: general interest, Wildlife: general interest.

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What to expect

It was 11:00 pm when I checked my email for the last time and turned off my phone for what I hoped would be forever.

No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio, or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce.

The Way Home is a modern-day Walden―an honest and lyrical account of a remarkable life lived in nature without modern technology. Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Man, explores the hard-won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the stream, foraging, and fishing.

What he finds is an elemental life, one governed by the rhythms of the sun and seasons, where life and death dance in a primal landscape of blood, wood, muck, water, and fire—much the same life we have lived for most of our time on earth. Revisiting it brings a deep insight into what it means to be human at a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring.

Critics Review

“Gerard Doyle’s narration aptly reflects the author—a man of strong convictions who chose to chart his own course…Doyle brings an Irish lilt to the narration, adopting a relaxed and unhurried pace…Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
AudioFile
“A deeply appealing examination of nearly all aspects of modern human life…This memoir about living off the grid and tech-free in County Galway will inspire, connect, and slow down the most impatient of readers, and that is a very good thing.”
Shelf Awareness
“[Boyle] writes vividly of Ireland’s village culture, with its neighborly sharing and cozy pubs, and of the satisfactions of hard work with tangible results…His elegy for rural life is lovely.”
Publishers Weekly
“Boyle knows few people can live like he does, but positive change seems inevitable if one follows his advice to resist material trappings, revolt against industrial ecological damage, and re-wild landscapes. Boyle’s anti-technology stance upsets many, making this a must-read.”
Booklist
“A candid chronicle of letting go of and living without the seemingly ubiquitous technological connections of modern society…There’s not enough space on Earth for everyone to move off the grid and back to the land, but Boyle’s pleasant book allows us to at least imagine the dream.”
Kirkus Reviews
“This one matters. Boyle is the real thing: vital, angry, and kind. And real things are terribly rare.”
Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast
“Illustrates beautifully that giving up many of the things in life that we treat as indispensable may actually be less of a sacrifice than a liberation.”
Neil Ansell, author of Deep Country
‘The Way Home paints a picture not only of how broken our culture has become but of how to begin building a new one. It demands to be read—and then lived by.’
Paul Kingsnorth, author of Real England

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