Memoir · 2019
The Way Home
Tales from a life without technology
What happens when a man gives up the phone, the internet, electricity and every machine that hums in the background of modern life?
In December 2016, Mark Boyle switched off for good. On a small plot of land in the west of Ireland, in a home he built by hand, he set out to discover what a life without complex technology could teach him about time, attention, community, and the land itself.
The Way Home follows a year of that life through the seasons: the work of finding water, food and fuel; the slow rhythm of days shaped by daylight and weather; the people and animals that share the place with him. With honesty and humour, Mark writes about the hard parts as well as the joys, and asks what we lose when we hand our lives over to our machines.
- Publisher
- Oneworld Publications
- Published
- 2019
- Genre
- Memoir / Nature
- ISBN
- 9781786076007
Buy the book
Available in hardback, paperback and ebook. Editions vary by country.
Inside the Book
A year lived by hand
Unplugging
Why Mark came to see complex technology as damaging to people and places alike, and what it was really like to let it go.
The work of living
Water, fire, food and shelter: the daily work that convenience hides from us, and the satisfaction of doing it yourself.
Home & belonging
Neighbours, community and a growing sense of belonging to one small corner of the earth.
How it was written
By lamplight, by hand
The Way Home was written entirely by hand. There was no laptop, no spell-check and no internet to look things up, just paper and ink, often by the light of a lamp after the day's work was done.
That way of writing shapes the book: unhurried and observant, closer to a letter from a friend than a dispatch from the news cycle.
Life without technology →
