Mysterium: A Novel

by Susan Froderberg

Overview

A BBC Summer Read

"Must-read . . . [Mysterium] ascends, literally and figuratively, vividly capturing the outer edge of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual travail." —The Washington Post

Inspired by the true story of Nanda Devi Unsoeld’s tragic 1976 death while climbing her namesake mountain, Susan Froderberg’s novel Mysterium tells the tale of a courageous woman’s ascent to the summit of India’s highest peak to honor her fallen mother.

Mysterium, known as Mount Sarasvati, looms over the Indian Himalayas as the range’s tallest peak in the dazzling fictional world Susan Froderberg has created.

Sarasvati “Sara” Troy is determined to reach the peak for which she was christened, and to climb it in honor of her mother, who perished in a mountaineering accident when Sara was just a child. She asks her father, a celebrated mountaineer and philosophy professor, to organize and lead the expedition.The six climbers he recruits are an uneasy mix. They include his longtime friend Dr. Arun Reddy, a recent widower, and Reddy’s son, who often challenges his father; Wilder Carson, the acclaimed climber who is tormented by the death of his brother; Wilder’s wife, Vida, a former lover of Dr. Reddy; and the distinguished scholar of climbing Virgil Adams and his wife, Hillary. Porters and Sherpas are recruited in India to assist and be part of the team.

The party’s journey is harrowing, taking them from the mountain’s gorge, into its sanctuary, and finally onto the summit, a path that evokes the hell, purgatory, and heaven of Dante’s Inferno. As the air thins and this unforgettable journey unfolds, Sara emerges as a Beatrice-like figure, buoying her companions up the mountain through the sheer strength and beauty of her being. Both monumental quest and dreamlike odyssey, Mysterium is infused with the language of climbing and profound existential insight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250214928
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	08/13/2019
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	4.80(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Susan Froderberg is the author of Old Border Road (2010), which the Los Angeles Times hailed as a “remarkable debut novel.” Her fiction has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Antioch Review, Conjunctions and others. She worked for several years as a critical care nurse in Seattle before moving East to study medical ethics and philosophy at Columbia University, where she received her PhD. She and her husband split their time between Seattle and New York City.

Editorial Reviews

06/18/2018
Froderberg’s austere adventure story is set in the early 1980s on Mt. Sarasvati, a fictional mountain in the Himalayas, and follows a group of climbers as they attempt a peak that hasn’t been climbed for 25 years. Instigating the climb is Sara, named for the mountain, which was in turn named for the goddess Sarasvati, and which is called Mysterium by Westerners. Sara wants to climb the mountain to honor her mother, who died when Sara was seven. She and her father, a philosophy professor and avid climber, are joined by six other friends ranging in age from their 20s to their 60s, all with their own ghosts and issues. On the gradual ascent, which takes months, they are accompanied by various porters and Sherpas, who believe, evidently with some justification, that the mountain is unhappy with those attempting to conquer her. Froderberg (Old Border Road) has a firm grasp on the technical aspects of climbing, as well as its many dangers, but her formal and sometimes oracular vocabulary, which routinely includes words like “curmurring” and “orogeny,” is likely to send readers to the dictionary. References to literary classics, including Dante’s Divine Comedy and Melville’s Moby-Dick also abound. The book offers the unusual combination of an intellectual challenge coupled with a brutal but ecstatic story. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Must-read . . . [Mysterium] ascends, literally and figuratively, vividly capturing the outer edge of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual travail . . . Froderberg has carefully contemplated body, soul and their fragile nexus. That pays off superbly as the air thins, and the surrealism of the terrain, the hallucinatory wanderings of oxygen-robbed brains and the discomfiture of sapped bodies converge cinematically." —Alexander C. Kafka, The Washington Post

"Ms. Froderberg knows all the ins and outs of climbing culture and her narrative is packed with the terrifying dangers . . . Mysterium re-creates the elegance and lofty religiosity of Victorian-era travelogues . . . Mysterium conveys the foolhardiness and sublimity of extreme climbing, which renders human life so breathtakingly small and fragile." —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Froderberg has a firm grasp on the technical aspects of climbing, as well as its many dangers . . . The book offers the unusual combination of an intellectual challenge coupled with a brutal but ecstatic story." —Publishers Weekly

"Froderberg peppers the novel with vibrant descriptions of the Indian subcontinent and weaves them in with contemplative takeaways about the sport of climbing . . . The harrowing adventure is ultimately suspenseful and nerve-racking, and the shifting emotional dynamics between the various members of the group efficiently spin a compelling story." —Booklist

From the Publisher

2018-05-15
Froderberg (Old Border Road, 2010) lays on the spiritual symbolism in this novel set on a fictional mountain in India named for an actual Hindu goddess of knowledge, learning, art, and music.Sarasvati Troy's namesake mountain was first scaled the day of her birth in 1956. As Sara's 25th birthday approaches in 1980, she and her father, a mountain-climbing philosophy professor, set out to scale Sarasvati with a hand-picked company of climbers: Professor Troy's friend Dr. Arun Reddy and his son, Devin; Virgil Adams, who reached the summit during the 1956 expedition, and his wife, Hillary (a name with its own climbing associations); driven climber Wilder Carson and his wife, Vida, who teaches yoga. Also along, at least in spirit, is Sara's mother, who died in a climbing accident when Sara was 7 but has remained a guiding presence in her daughter's life. Scaling Sarasvati demands grueling, sometimes literally impossible expenditures of spiritual and physical resources. Readers are drawn into the pain, danger, and mental exhaustion the characters face, but despite (or perhaps due to a surfeit of) lyrical prose, readers may also share the boredom—as similar scenarios are repeated, even the danger of avalanches becomes less compelling. So does Sara's unearthly goodness despite her predictable romance with sensitive Devin. Fortunately, the other climbers are less perfect and therefore more interesting. When Hillary is injured and goes home before reaching base camp, Adams' longing for her and their domestic comfort overwhelms his drive to climb. Long-time philanderer Reddy had a brief affair with Vida before his wife's death, and sparks still fly between them despite Vida's hope that Sarasvati will reignite her marriage with her seemingly oblivious husband. Coming across as a macho jerk, Wilder is secretly tortured by grief and guilt over the climbing accident that killed his twin brother."The poetry was in the climbing," Froderberg writes, but the drama here is in the muddle humans make of their lives.

Kirkus Reviews