The Fall (Paperback)

The Fall is quite the most sublime, brilliant, very very good book you’ll read this year or at anytime you happen to come across it. A startingly well written and conceived, superbly plotted, gripping, surprising and refreshing novel which covers coming of age, family ties and tensions, friendships, lovers; underpinned (or should that be "belayed") by the world of the rock climber.

You can rely on The Fall giving you some heart stopping mountain action, extraordinary sexual tension, a touching exploration of deep seated friendship and a killer twist left tactfully until the very last page.

The climbers, friends and protagonists are the enigmatic Jamie Mathewson and reserved Rob Dewar who meet as young boys on the verge of adolescence. We explore their sexual awakening and burgeoning love of the challenge of the mountain. The novel then criss-crosses between their parents con-joined and conflicting younger lives and loves and the two boys growing together and apart into middle age.

One slight negative criticism is that the lynchpin to the climbing plot bears some keen similarities to Joe Simpson’s Touching the Void, a remarkable real life account of a climbing expedition to Peru in the 1980’s now released as a mesmerising and chilling movie. But then again both add to each other as a rewarding follow on.

The Fall’s action sequences are poetic and compelling, matching the emotional angst and joy of their own climb through life. It is beautifully observed without once laying on thick the easy symbolism between the two challenges that some lesser writers could easily and cheaply succumb to.

At last a British novelist that can treat life’s universal themes with likely universal appeal, in an intelligent, articulate, original and highly readable way. If you’re an avid reader or even if you’re just looking for a commute pass time, The Fall is simply great. What a refreshing change to the manufactured and commercial pap that our more well known and popular British "boy meets girl" authors could ever offer.

The Fall, released in paperback in April 2004, is still relatively a new book. Get in quick and read it now. Guaranteed to having you recommending it to everyone you know and starting something special for Simon Mawer. He deserves it.

As exciting as the mountaineering passages are, this is not primarily an adventure story. With its title connoting the fall of Adam and Eve, the novel deals with huge, complex questions of love and loss, life and death, and truth and responsibility. The story of whether Jamie's death was accidental or suicide, which seems so straightforward and plot-driven on the surface, becomes far more intricate as the reader is guided back and forth in time, sharing the lives of Rob and Jamie as young teenagers, the lives and interrelationships of their mothers during World War II, the life and loves of famed mountaineer Guy Matthewson (Jamie's father), and the lives of Rob and Jamie and their lovers when they are in their twenties.

Because of the many interrelationships among the characters--love affairs, seductions, pregnancies both planned and unplanned, and even sexual abuse--some of the most sensational events in the novel take place not on the mountainside but in the bedroom. These scenes often combine the imagery of love with that of climbing and falling, and contrast the subjective reality of love and life with the objective reality posed by danger in the mountains, especially with its death and loss.

Heaven and hell, sin and redemption, love and loss, honesty and betrayal, and ultimately life and death are all combined here in a vibrant novel which provides fast action and crises both on the mountain and in the personal lives of the characters over two generations. Though there are some clichés, along with some awkwardness in the plotting (especially in the predictable ending), this is a strong, dramatic novel which may become a popular breakthrough for Mawer. Mary Whipple