Survivor, Life in the SAS, by Mark Wales

'Self deprecation' is a concept that anyone considering writing an autobiography should understand and embrace.

Mark Wales is a ruggedly handsome bloke from a good, honest family, who fulfils his ambition to join Australia's elite Special Air Service Regiment and serve in combat.  After leaving the army he attends an Ivy League business school, becomes a corporate high flyer, starts a fashion label, meets lots of pretty girls and stars in a TV show.

As a result, this could have been an incredibly boring book.

On the face of it, Mark has lived a life - several lives in fact - that many people could only dream of.  The strength of this book, however, is not in his successes, but in his failures and the raw, honest, insightful and often funny way in which he tells them.

There are some beautifully-written, if cringeworthy, scenes in which we learn of his first fumblings with sex, monumental cock-ups during officer training, and 'F' after 'F' as he tries to pursue higher education after the army. At one point during the combat deployments he has strived for we see him crying in front of his commanding officer - I think I'm safe in saying that's a first for an SAS memoir.

The book opens with a scene that choked me up, a serious incident which profoundly affected his later life.  His depictions of the reality of combat are confronting in the deliberately casual way in which the aftermath of airstrikes and gun battles is relayed, and he expertly uses the writer's trick of 'showing' these, rather than 'telling' them, through a deft use of dialogue.

Likewise he shows us, through descriptions of alcohol abuse, anger and despair, the effects of repeated exposure to trauma on the body and soul and the crushing anti-climax many people experience in life after operational service.

We see in Survivor a man who has fought for everything he has attained, and learned from the many mistakes he - like all of us - has made in life. 

The only time I found myself losing sympathy for our flawed hero was in his depictions of his relationships with women, but (spoiler alert coming) if you, too, feel that way, stick with him... you're in for a surprise. 

When people ask me how to write a non fiction book I say to them, "write it like a novel". The novelist uses not only narrative (I did this, I did that...), but also description and dialogue to put the reader in the scene, alongside the protagonist, and a dramatic arc - a storyline that takes a reader on journey of highs and lows to an ending of some sort.  Survivor is a text book example of this.

I suspect Mark Wales has applied himself to the business of writing in the same way he has achieved all his other goals in life - through single-minded determination, bloody hard work, and by staying grounded with a good, healthy dose of self-deprecation.

He can now add 'author' to his already impressive list of hard-won achievements.

This book made me laugh and cry.  Bravo Zulu (well done).

5 out of 5

Published by Pan Macmillan Australia

Tony Park

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