- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Victoria University Press (April 1 2002)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0864734131
- ISBN-13: 978-0864734136
- Product Dimensions: 19.9 x 13.8 x 1.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 272 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Book Description
The intricate and arduous underground world of caving is the setting for this prizewinning first novel of quest and self-discovery. Beautifully written and engrossing, it comes to a spellbinding conclusion in the deep chambers of Deadmans cave. Below won the Adam Award for best first book in 2000.
About the Author
Tim Corballis has an M.A. in creative writing. He has studied mathematics and philosophy at Auckland University. He lives in Dunedin and Wellington, New Zealand.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fine psychological novel of outdoorsmanship.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Below (Paperback)
The novel _Below_, from New Zealand, should appeal to a variety of audiences. It is foremost a finely crafted, extremely subtle novel about the compulsions and psychosocial difficulties of its main character, Todd, a lately unemployed and unattached database programmer, mathematician and weekend caver. This hobby of Todd's, exploring the quiet mysteries of the underground, takes on paramount importance in the novel. The novel fuses the caving side of its plot, which should appeal to a broad range of explorers, armchair explorers, and "Outside" readers, remarkably well with the drama of Todd's withdrawal into borderline madness through a strange, half-sexual friendship with an older caver who compulsively revisits the cave in which a former young "friend" disappeared. Todd's madness, or his difficulty interacting with people, takes hold so subtly that one is never sure if it is truly madness; it is expressed through his life and relationships, and metaphorized in his caving, and also through his mathematical explorations (which are also convincingly rendered, at least for the informed non-mathematician). The end proves suggestive, but provides little resolution to the plot or the reader's questions; Todd's uncertainty about boundaries is infectious.The novel's prose is so unaffected it almost slips by you unnoticed, but in fact it's very carefully put together. And, for all its psychological subtlety, it's a page-turner -- I read it in the course of one day, staying up late because I didn't want to put it down. Here's hoping this book finds a wider audience outside of New Zealand...
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