The subtitle of Mark Boyle’s latest book – Tales from a Life Without Technology – gives a bare bones summary of its theme.  In the winter of 2017, he decided to unplug from the world and to live, initially for a year, without electricity and everything it powers. No telephone (mobile or other), no computer, no running water, no car. With the proceeds from a previous book, he bought a smallholding in rural Ireland and set about building a home (with hand tools only, of course) and making a new life. His motives for disconnecting changed over time but it was as much to do with savoring the world as it was about saving it.  He wanted to slow down, to connect with himself and his tiny corner of the Earth, and to push away what he had grown to see as the silly and dangerous distractions that for most of us make up more and more of the center of our lives.

Covering the four seasons of a single year, The Way Home charts Boyle’s new daily life and his reactions to it: building his home, fishing, growing vegetables, chopping wood, getting to know his neighbors. What seemed simple proved to be surprisingly complicated, less for practical reasons than for emotional ones. Abandoning phones and computers made it much harder to stay in touch with friends and family, for example.

Boyle is careful not to proselytize and accepts freely that his life choices are unlikely to appeal to many.  His tone is gentle, reflective, and nonjudgmental (though smugness occasionally creeps in), and it’s hard to conclude at the end of the book that he is anything other than a kind, sincere, and honest truth-seeker.  His reflections on what we’re doing to ourselves, our relationships, and our planet are often profound, alarming and true. We can’t all live like Mark Boyle but we ought to try. Trying might just be enough to change the world.