Wil says goodbye to his family and friends in North Wales, and hello to adventure in South America, heading into the unknown, away from comfort and predictability in a bid to ‘let go’.
From the beach he lives on with only a stray dog for company, to his final destination with its tearful goodbyes, Wil shares the joys and the trials of his search for freedom of the soul. He talks candidly of friendships, drugs, sex, politics, of the fear and elation he experiences along the way, of how dangerously close ‘letting go’ can come to ‘losing it’ when the boundary between exploration and hedonism becomes blurred.
Wil Gritten writes with a wonderful self-deprecating sense of humour and refreshing emotional honesty, and his ability to make the most alien of places come to life means that the reader is transported away with him, feeling less like an observer and more like a travelling companion on Wil’s journey.
Extract
I shouldn’t be this scared. I should be coping better. I winged it though two dead bodies and a bout of septicaemia in India when I was eighteen.
I survived those two insane months with my old mate Gwyds in Madagascar when I was twenty-one.
I’ve worked in all sorts of crazy places around the world – from Cape Town to Tokyo to darkest North Wales. I’ve lived and worked on Coldharbour Lane amongst the crack dealers and smackheads for years. I should not be this scared.
But I am.
It has been built up so much in my mind by my well-meaning friends and relatives with their well-meaning advice:
‘Watch out for the rapists and the kidnappers, Wil,’ they’d say helpfully, ‘and the thieves and the murderers and the coppers.’
‘Ooo yeah Wil, the coppers, they’re the worst.’
‘Yeah Wil, I heard the coppers kidnap you, rob you, then sell you to the rapists who rape you and then murder you.’
‘Ooo yeah, I heard that too, Wil. Where is it you’re going again?’
My own imagination, though I try to relax and be positive, makes up reams of horror stories too, mostly centring around being mugged. While still in Wales I dreamed of running endlessly through a Brazilian favella after kids who’d stolen my BMX and rucksack, sweating and cursing them in a language they could only laugh at.
I have learned next to nothing about this country or its language. I have learnt to count in Spanish. That is all. What am I doing?
About Wil Gritten
Wil Gritten was raised happily in North wales without toy guns or television. At sixteen he left home and moved to Brixton under the pretence of becoming a carpenter. Within a year he found himself alone in India, and started writing. Wil stumbled into a career in modelling, and spent a few years working for some of the largest international fashion brands. By the age of twenty-five Wil had circumnavigated the globe twice. He writes and records his own unpleasant variety of music and is an expert in the field of organic vegetable gardening. He is currently living in Australia.
Letting Go is published as part of the Bright Young Things series by Parthian Books. All books in the series are from debut authors.
