- Hardcover: 370 pages
- Publisher: Little Brown and Company (Jan 7 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0316097802
- ISBN-13: 978-0316097802
- Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 15.5 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 635 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,152,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Uncommonly wise and painstakingly crafted, this tale of struggles on personal and physical slopes ranges from present-day Wales to blitz-era London, tracking two generations of tangled love affairs. It begins with the death of acclaimed mountain climber Jamie Matthewson near his home in craggy North Wales. When Jamie's childhood friend Rob Dewar goes to visit Matthewson's widow, Ruth, the novel steps backwards in time to recount the story of Jamie's relationship with Rob and Ruth. From their childhood onwards, Jamie and Rob share a love of mountain climbing, of the sheer danger involved in it. The two men are rivals as athletes but also as lovers, as they compete for the love of many women-from Ruth, a drifting free-spirited artist who eventually marries Jamie, to Jamie's mother herself. As Ruth's relationship with Jamie evolves, it does not necessarily cool with Rob, straining the friendship between the two. Mawer gradually reveals that the complications began before either Jamie or the narrator were born, describing the kindling of romance between Jamie's father, himself a mountain climber, Rob's mother and Jamie's mother in England during the heady years of World War II. Although the mountain-climbing descriptions sometimes threaten to overpower the novel with their intensity, their metaphorical significance always wins out. Mawer has created characters and situations that overflow with truly believable pain and exhilaration, and he endows the narrative with a surging energy that pushes the book forward, all the way to an end which, like the final line of a haiku, casts a startling light on everything that came before it.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Like his father before him, Jamie Matthewson is a world-class mountain climber and, like his father before him, meets his death while pursuing his passion with a recklessness that fails to exorcise his relentless demons. When Jamie falls during a routine climb in his native Wales, and not on the slopes of Everest as his father had, his death seems more intentional than accidental. For Rob Dewar, Jamie's childhood friend and onetime climbing partner, Jamie's death occasions a fall of his own, a tumble back in time in which he unleashes an avalanche of family secrets that will dangerously bind the two men together in ways neither could ever have imagined. Sons and mothers, husbands and wives, friends and lovers: in Mawer's masterful hands, none of these relationships are what they seem. Intricately weaving time and place, from the bombed-out ruins of World War II London to isolated Alpine mountain peaks, Mawer crafts a sinuously devastating tale of forbidden love and faithless betrayal. A haunting and mesmerizing novel from an expert storyteller. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
another excellent book,
By
This review is from: The Fall: A Novel (Paperback)
I read "The Gospel of Judas" last year. So I chose this book for our book club's reading selection. I can't say everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. Most people were distracted by the mountain climbing scenes. Everyone though it was a great story but I am not sure they got as much out of it as I did. As an english major I am a little more tuned in to seeing under the imagery and the words that Mawer chooses. I loved the play with light and dark. And the thought provoking situations. It made for great conversation in the group. And I got to read an author who isn't crusty all over with boring language. Mawer doesn't beat you over the head with the metaphors, he simply puts them out there and you either enjoy them or you don't. It is a great read for readers of all levels. Something for everyone!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
By
This review is from: The Fall (Hardcover)
Simon Mawer's The Fall is an excellent work of fiction, one of the most enjoyable novels I have read in a long time. The story concerns several intertwining relationships that span the late 1930s through present day England. The novel opens as Jamie Matthewson, world-renowned climber falls to his death in a climb he was sure to fail at. His old, somewhat estranged friend Rob Dewar hears of the accident over the radio in his car, and immediately heads to attend the funeral and Jamie's wife and mother, to the displeasure of his wife. Rob's return to the climbing world he left behind years ago forces him to recall, for our benefit, his relationship with Jamie and the reasons for its disintegration. Rob's story involves not only Jamie and Rob, but the relationship of all of their parents many years ago. The narrative shifts between Rob's first-person explanation of the Jamie-Rob years and a third-person narrative of their mothers' friendship and various loves during World War II England. The Fall is a fascinating look at many "falls"--falling to one's death, falling in and out of love, falling into sin, the fall of one's life. It's a compelling, well-written read. Enjoy.
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The Fall" Explores The Gamut Of Human Emotions - Superb!!,
By
This review is from: The Fall (Hardcover)
This is a powerhouse of a novel that will have you reading compulsively until you've turned the last page, and will leave you deep in thought long after that. "The Fall" has achieved a place on my Top 10 list of favorite works of fiction.Rob Dewer hears on the car radio that his old friend and mountain climbing partner, Jamie Matthewson, has fallen to his death while making an almost suicidal solo climb. Although the two men have not been in touch for years, the news hits Dewer hard, stirring up a series of memories and strong, unresolved feelings from long ago. He immediately turns his car towards Wales and begins a journey, not only to bring comfort to Matthewson's widow, his old friend and former lover, Ruth, but into the past where decades old secrets and betrayals are disclosed. Author Simon Mawer writes, "At some time or other you must confront your past. We are our past...There is nothing else, and none of it can be undone." Mawer visits the past of a group of people who are intimately connected through friendship, love, lust, jealousy, competition, hatred and blood ties. The enormous power of some of Mawer's characters is almost overwhelming at times, as is their extreme fragility and vulnerability. His prose is masterful and poignant. The plot is riveting, compelling, almost brutal, in its honesty. I have never been very interested in the sport of climbing, but Mawer's narrative transported me, time and time again, on exhilarating treks up mountainsides; the action so vividly described that I felt that I was one of the climbers. His descriptions of landscapes, both fierce and bucolic, are as visual as paintings. Mawer is indeed a master craftsman. This is a novel of love, of moral choices and decisions that life forces us to make. Sometimes the repercussions of these decisions echo into the future, for generations to come. This is truly one of the most amazingly original novels I have read in years and it has effected me deeply. I cannot praise "The Fall" highly enough!
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