Nicholas O'Connell

THE STORMS OF DENALI
By Nicolas O’Connell
University of Alaska Press, 2012, 295pp

While I enjoy classic mountain climbing films such as CLIFF HANGER, THE EIGER SANCTION, K2, WHERE EAGLES DARE, and THE CLIMB, they aren’t my passion. As a genre they seem overly predictable: think allegory, think macho rivalry, think cold and suffering, think survival. Indeed, all these elements are present in Nicholas O’Connell’s engrossing first novel, THE STORMS OF DENALI, about climbing North America’s highest peak (in Alaska), yet O’Connell’s telling is downright Conradian. I think, in particular, of Conrad’s seafaring story, TYPHOON. But also of Conrad’s dictum that the writer’s first responsibility is to make the reader “see.”

O’Connell immerses us not only in the physical risks, but in the sensory details of the climbers’ experience: “As I front-pointed up the steep snow, my left calf began cramping up. As I put my weight on it, it spasmed and threw me off balance. For a split second, I was falling. Then my axes held. Heart pumping wildly, I madly kicked my crampons back into the slope and tried to recover. Visions of tumbling back down to base camp made my head swim. I deliberately avoided looking down and instead made sure that I had solid placements.”

The narrative is riveting, and O’Connell is especially good at describing the first person narrator’s--John’s--determination in overcoming pain and exhaustion: the athlete’s “pushing through,” as well as the different personalities and conflicts of the climbing party. The focus on the climb prevents O’Connell from granting John’s wife back home, Jill, as concrete a presence as “the white nightmare of Denali,” but overall this is a dramatic, thought-provoking and moving debut.… (mehr)