Between a Rock and a Hard Place Aron Ralston Simon & Schuster, 354pp, £14.99 ISBN 0743263537

The most intriguing inclusion in the long list of acknowledgements at the end of this book is the name of Quentin Tarantino, "from whose work", Aron Ralston writes, "I found the inspiration for the storyline". This is revealing. Ralston's fame is based on an act of astounding violence and self-harm that could almost have come from the twisted imagination of Tarantino himself.

In spring 2003, Ralston, a 27-year-old former mechanical engineer turned mountaineer from Colorado, was out climbing in a remote desert canyon in eastern Utah. He was almost pathologically drawn to the outdoors life and had scaled all 59 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks; this outing was simply preparation for a later attempt on North America's highest mountain. While climbing, Ralston's right arm became pinned under an 800-pound boulder - and there he remained trapped. By the fourth day, he was reduced to drinking his own urine. Convinced that he would die, he recorded messages for his family on his digital camera and etched his epitaph on to the canyon walls. In that depressed and delirious state, Ralston had a vision of a three-year-old boy running across a sunlit floor to be scooped up by a one-armed man. Convinced that it was a vision of his future son, he decided to take drastic action. He took out his pocketknife and amputated his own arm. After doing this, Ralston walked seven miles before coming across other hikers and being rescued by a helicopter. In no time his story was news across the globe. He was feted as a hero, a symbol of hope and inspiration.

Being able to amputate your own arm is deeply impressive - as is being able to write a 352-page account of the experience. Ralston makes use of the cinematic device of flashback: the five days he is crushed by the boulder give him plenty of time to think and reflect. An alternative title for the book could have been Zen and the Art of Mountain Climbing. He quotes Walter Bonatti: "Mountains are the means, the man is the end. The goal is not to reach the tops of mountains but to improve the man."

Ralston is superb at evoking the epic beauty of the land, and his description of his ordeal is riveting: think Touching the Void directed by Tarantino. But what many readers will most want to know is what it actually feels like to cut off your own arm, and whether, in the same situation, they would be able to do it. On such matters, Ralston's answers are disap-pointing. At times the book feels like the literary equivalent of a lap dancer who insists on telling you her thoughts on global warming when all you want her to do is take her clothes off. Having teased us for almost 300 pages, Ralston finally describes plunging the knife into his arm: "I'm like a pipe cutter scoring through the outer circumference of a piece of soft tubing." And yet, for all the eye-watering detail, Ralston's description of his amputation feels as detached as the arm itself. A logical, methodical and analytical brain may be useful for climbing mountains, but it is less so for writing about it.

By the end of the book, Ralston is a celebrity: not just a mountain climber but a social climber, too. He refers to his accident as "the most beautifully spiritual experience" of his life. The lesson he draws from it is that, as individuals, we have to "follow our bliss, seek our passions and live our lives as inspirations to each other". Throughout the book he has close calls, takes unnecessary risks and ignores the advice of others, only to be rescued at the last minute. Understandably, he wants to be seen as a profound visionary who followed his own passions, but then, it was only through the efforts of others that he survived. Had he not had the good fortune to encounter other hikers, even cutting off his own arm would not have been enough.

Sarfraz Manzoor is a writer and documentary film-maker

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