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THE RAGE TO SURVIVE by Jacques Vignes

THE RAGE TO SURVIVE

By

Pub Date: Feb. 13th, 1975
Publisher: Morrow

M. Vignes serves as ""intermediary"" to tell the essentially slight story of Lucien, congenital escapist, who had bought and refitted a gaff-rigged steel cutter in Beaulieu, and Catherine, nineteen-year-old dropout daughter of a career civil servant, who went sailing with him one day into a storm which forced them on to an inflatable life raft. If toward the end of the account you read the line ""our story runs the risk of being blurred, confused,"" you won't be surprised; there is very little of the specificity which lends stamina and excitement to the stronger stories of survival--just a little about the cold, the damp, the wind; the wounds and burns; the fantasy-mirages which overtook Lucien and Catherine before the twelfth day when they were rescued. M. Vignes adds an informational coda on how to (better) manage this kind of adventure--the right supplies, signals, etc. But in comparison to other ordeals, most recently and notably Survive the Savage Sea, this is frail and incidental.