A Winter's Tale

By Peter Stoler

ALIVE: THE STORY OF THE ANDES SURVIVORS

by PIERS PAUL READ 352 pages. Lippincott. $10.

On Oct. 12, 1972, a twin-engine Fairchild F227 chartered from the Uruguayan air force took off from Montevideo carrying an amateur rugby team and a planeload of friends and supporters to Santiago, Chile. Most never completed their journey. The plane slammed into a mountainside at an altitude of more than 11,000 ft. Of the 45 people on board, only 32, some critically injured, were alive the next morning.

Waist-deep snow kept the crashed Fairchild almost invisible from the air and made escape from the mountain impossible. For more than a week, the little band lived on a daily ration of a square of chocolate and a cup of wine. Eventually, as both food and hope dwindled, the survivors reached a decision that any well-fed reader will find difficult to judge. They began to eat the flesh of their dead companions. The grisly diet enabled 16 of them to sustain life for 70 days, until the snows had melted enough for two of the party's strongest members to make a harrowing, ten-day descent in search of help. When helicopters finally reached the mountaintop on Dec. 22,14 Uruguayans, most of them less than 20 years old, were still alive to greet their rescuers.

Graphic Understatement. Such a tale is easy to sensationalize. As headlines flashed round the world, North American publishers rushed in, carrying cash and book contracts. The job of describing the tragedy eventually went to a British novelist, Piers Paul Read (The Professor's Daughter, Monk Daw son), whom the survivors, after considerable reflection and an interview, personally selected to tell their story. The choice proved sound.

With graphic understatement, Alive portrays the desperation that preceded the decision to eat the dead. The young survivors-all of them devout Catholics -gradually realized that such a step was inevitable if they were to live. They debated the matter in detail, under the circumstances showing an extraordinary and civilized concern for conviction rather than an easy rush to expediency. Essentially, they decided that God wanted them to stay alive if they possibly could, and had given them the means to do so in the bodies of their friends.

Even after their decision, many of the survivors could not bring themselves to eat human flesh. Finally, a medical student, Roberto Canessa, cut some matchstick-sized slivers from one of the bodies, placed them on the battered aluminum roof of the plane to dry in the sun and then, to prove his resolution, forced himself to eat one. All but two of the others eventually followed his lead. Despite their cannibalism, the boys evolved a careful set of rules to govern their conduct. Food was still rationed, and a series of priorities developed to determine which bodies were to be eaten and when. To spare the feelings of two survivors, it was agreed not to eat the sister of one or the wife of the other unless all other food was consumed. In doing so, they showed not hypocrisy but a natural human understanding that the restraints imposed by faith and civilization are always arbitrary, and perhaps for that reason are all the more fragile and invaluable.

The author, Piers Paul Read, wisely lets the various boys explain what force kept some of them going while others lost the will to live. One boy, who died before rescue arrived, wrote movingly in a letter to his family and fiancee: "Life is hard, but it is worth living.

Even Suffering. . Peter Stoler

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