This is about a climber falling on Mt. Everest while being guided by two Sherpas in a similar sense to how [b:The Passenger|60526801|The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)|Cormac McCarthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1647021401l/60526801._SX50_.jpg|58040703] is about a plane crashing into the water and discovered to be one passenger short. Neither the falling nor the crashing is the point and the reader won't find out what ended up happening there. Plot itself is not the point.

Two Sherpas is perhaps really about what Daniell puts into the mouth of a theatre instructor talking about Shakespeare's Julius Caesar halfway into the novel, and it's a pretty good description of McCarthy's novel as well actually:

"So what is it this play is trying to tell us in its very first scene? It doesn't matter. The author is Shakespeare, and he, like Isaac Newton, does not formulate hypotheses: he limits himself to describing the psychic mechanisms of man."

These authors are not formulating hypotheses of what happened to a fallen English climber, or to a missing airplane passenger. Such concern for plot is not what interests them. They are describing the inner worlds of humankind.

Two Sherpas puts the reader inside the minds of two men as they gaze down at a body, but they may as well be letting their minds wander in the shower. They seem to care about as much for that man's life as the British climber who in 1921, after an avalanche killed seven Sherpas, cared for the Sherpa lives when he radioed to Base Camp that, "all the whites are safe."

The teenage Sherpa thinks about being informed of his father's death, the Shakespeare play he will be appearing in, and amusingly changes career plans a number of times in the few minutes of time in which the book takes place as they gaze at the body. He wonders if the other Sherpa may have pushed the English climber for some reason. The older Sherpa, who is neither very old nor apparently actually an ethnic Sherpa, thinks about a difficult period in his life when, seemingly suffering from depression, he has an odd encounter with a young woman and her nearly catatonic husband who utters a few questions about if "the kings" ever cared for us. Does he connect "the kings" to the imperious Mt. Everest, uncaring about the fates of those on the mountain, in his mind at this moment? Is there a connection in the younger man's mind between Julius Caesar and the mighty Everest, between Brutus and the older Sherpa? Is that what leads them on their trains of thought at these moments? Maybe, who knows. The mind is a mysterious place. ( )

I wouldn't reccomend this book to anyone who was not into obscure literary references and metaphores. Despite many interesting historical facts and insights into differing perspectives on the impact of colonialism on the Sherpas, the reader needs to prepare for a wandering and often obscure narrative. ( )