A haunting novel by a very underrated author. You don't have to be interested in rock climbing (I'm certainly not) to 'get' this book. It is superbly written by Harrison and follows the protagonist, Mike, over a year as he meets and climbs with a motley band of rock climbers.

There are flashbacks to scenes from his life - a failed marriage, first meetings with the climbers - as well as superbly descriptive passages on the minutiae of everyday life in dull provincial towns with their soulless housing estates and grim little lives.

Harrison is very good at capturing that very British air of quite desperation, of lives trapped in amber. This is some of his best writing and I'd recommend it readily. ( )

Written in 1989, it's about a group of (rock) climbers but it's not a straight book about climbing as a sport; it's more about the strange characters who live to climb, and the life choices they make in order to maintain their lifestyle. There are descriptions of locations, events, people and conversations, but they are really just a background to the state of mind of the main character/narrator and what he gleans from his small group of obsessive friends, pieces of information about their lives and passion.

There's little in the way of linearity to the structure and people and places appear as and when required, to illustrate an idea about something or to enhance the atmosphere, which switches often and freely between gloomy bedsit introspection and the thrills of the rock face. That said, there is very little that feels like celebration, and even outside on a warm morning the narrator is more concerned with the tragic loss of the countryside, the over-use of the rock face by amateurs or the worn-out clothing and equipment of his climbing partners than by the joy of the sport. This tone is enhanced by several tragic events that are explained at a distance and through fragments and dreams, rather than by a build up of story telling tension. No authorial tricks are played, no answers are offered and the novel reads more like a study in mood and nihilism. It's a superb piece of writing and I much preferred it to 'Light' which I read 5 or 6 years ago.

To the reviewer before me, I believe the 'Fall' chapter reference may be something to do with the antithesis of climbing.. ( )

I've seldom read a worse book than this - well written as it is. Pretentious, pointless, confused, and just wrong in so much spirit despite getting the technical details reasonably correct. It is "set" in 1984 - although you don't find this out until very near the end, and given the incredibly confusing flashback nature of the way it is written could be almost anytime from the late 70s onwards. A youngish man called Mike comes to Manchester looking for a new start in life and to try his hand at his 'climbing thing he's seen somewhere. But it's all dark and rainy up North, all the time, and so it's grim and he doesn't climb much. Apart from sudden bits where he does with some vague acquaintances that he's made. I'm sure the author intends some metaphorical journey equivalent to a climb, but it doesn't work in any respect.

Mike knows nothing about his acquaintances, and doesn't bother to find out about them either. Apparently no-one Up North is trusted to tell the truth about themselves, because these are all shifty people making cash on the side, layabouts, and otherwise ne'er-do-wells. If they were supposed to illustrate the sacrifices they make to be good at their chosen sport, then it would help if at least one of them had actually been any good. Instead they're all depicted as no more than average, with a casual air of competancy, but at least a little bit better than Mike. One of them falls off an easy climb and dies suddenly. No explanation is ever given why he was doing that climb, how he came to fall off (climbers as a general rule don't "just fall off") or anything else. There had been some inspection into his life, but nothing came of it. Particularly annoying about this is that the following scenes where the climbing friends attend his funeral and interact with his family are some of the best in the book - poignant, detailed and imaginative.

To be fair, it is quite obvious that Harrison is a skilled author, he creates vivid scenes in detailed prose that reads easily. The technical climbing details (unexplained so you do need to have a little familiarity with terms like 'runners' and 'gear placement') are accurate. The rocks, crags, cliffs and cafés are real places frequented by climbers still (apart from those that have shut). But for all this he completely fails to capture any of the real spirit of climbing. None of the emotion or challenge; adrenaline highs and euphoric success is found. Neither are the depressive lows, the days when it doesn't work, when injury or work or life keeps you away from the rock , and frustration mounts until not climbing is impossible. None of that comes through at all. There are a few occasions when there are attempts to capture this, but hey nearly always appear through eh characters other interactions with the world, rather than from climbing itself. The author may have been climbing once or twice, he has almost certainly seen plenty of climbing. But he does not understand climbing. Which makes it a particularly poor choice to use as theme for this novel.

Particular hates:
Having a chapter entitled 'Fall' in a climbing book, set in england, by an english author, but meaning Autumn.
Pg 77 "I had already seen that, to climbers, climbing was less a sport than an obsession. It was a metaphor by which they hoped to demonstrate something to themselves" Absolute codswallop. I'll allow the gross generalisation for climbers although in truth there are many strands of climbers, but none of them that I have ever met, ever, not even once, think of climbing as a metaphor for anything. Obsession sure. But only in terms of itself, nothing half so pretentious as being a metaphor for "something" about themselves.
Typing /writing .grammar errors. One was horrendous in that the whole sentence made no sense at all. I can't face the thought of skimming this rubbish again to find it though.
Polaroid photos don't improve after a year. If they were faded and rubbish to being with, they only get worse.
The whole wife and daughter-in-law sub plot thing. Do not care. Doesn't fit into anything else, seems irrelevant at best, and contradictory at worst, especially when he doesn't meet her. What the hell happened to Nina?
Cavers are not some strange subspecies of human. Caves don't smell and generally aren't slimy. Cavers do have the best parties though!

There's also a very boring forward which starts out by telling you what happens 'In the final pages'. Thanks for nothing whoever you are who wrote that.

Rubbish all the way through. I've read it for you. You shouldn't waste your money or time on it. ( )

As the title suggests this is a novel about Climbers, not the glory seekers having a stab at Mount Everest, but rather those who operate a little closer to home. About a man who's climbing hobby comes to dominate his life, as it does with those of his friends, as they tackle crags, cliffs and quarries all over Britain. There is a cost for this obsession paid in their personal lives, and you are very aware of the ever present sense of risk hovering over them, as acquaintances and friends succumb to accidents of different severity. It's warts and all, grounded and realistic, carried as ever by Harrison's gift with language. There's no overarching plot and the story as such reads like a slice of life, like a fly on the wall documentary before reality TV came in a took over.

Not only is this my favourite of Harrison's novels (and I've read them all except the most recent one), but I believe it to be his best. This book is amazingly underappreciated. I think it's one of the greatest novels in English in the past 30 years.