The Fall: A Novel

by Simon Mawer

Overview

Rob Ross is driving home when he hears that his childhood friend Jim Matthewson has fallen to his death in a climbing accident. Rob's decision to turn his car around and make the journey to comfort Jim's widow is the beginning of a journey into the past, back to Rob's youth before he made the pivotal choices that now come back to haunt him.

Simon Mawer skillfully unveils the delicate layers of history in the lives of a group of people connected over the years by camaraderie, love, competition, and lust. In the shadow of an old love triangle lies the story of another, and as we follow the characters from London during the Blitz to the mountain ranges of the Alps and back to present-day Wales, Mawer reveals how the agonies of the past impinge upon the present.

This is an intelligent, thought-provoking love story by a brilliant, masterful novelist.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316735599
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	02/09/2004
Edition description:	1st Back Bay Paperback Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

''Dramatic'' is certainly the adjective of choice for The Fall, Simon Mawer's fine new novel about mountaineering. The book takes as its starting point the horrible accident of its title, with James Matthewson, a renowned but now middle-aged mountain climber, tumbling from the face of a Welsh cliff that he should not have been attempting by himself. He dies almost instantly, leaving behind a widow, an estranged best friend and a number of mysteries, among them why he would be climbing such a difficult route without ropes or a helmet. Could the veteran climber have been trying to commit suicide? It's a question for which the bulk of the novel is designed to provide an answer. — Gary Krist

The New York Times

British author of the extraordinary Mendel's Dwarf (1998) returns with a much more ordinary tale of star-crossed love. The Welsh Guy Matthewson is widely known as a climber by the time the considerably younger Diana Sheridan-on a walking tour with friends-meets the famous man, goes climbing alone with him, stays overnight in his hotel-and falls hopelessly in love, as he does with her. But there are problems. It's 1940, Diana will soon be a nurse in London, and not only does Guy face the trials of being a conscientious objector (though he switches later), but he's married-to a German wife who left him two years before and returned to Germany with their young daughter. Diana can't believe he'll ever be free to marry her, and so ends the affair (by letter) when she finds she's pregnant-and never tells him that she aborted their own infant daughter before entering her loveless and short-lived marriage with a doctor. She doesn't even tell him about it when they happen to meet once more, after the war-Guy by now married to the good-looking Meg, as sexually loose as Diana is contained-and have a last passionate night of true love. All of this is told in flashbacks from the 1960s and later, in a story about the intimate friendship between Diana's son, Rob Dewar, and Meg's son, Jamie Matthewson. The two will climb together-Jamie will go on later to achieve truly enormous international fame-until an accident takes Rob off the Alpine faces and puts him into the art gallery business. Years pass, then decades-and only with the deadly fall alluded to by the title will past mysteries finally be revealed. Nothing new, really (the secret kept by one generation from another may not satisfy wholly once it'srevealed), but well and skillfully done: the landscapes are wonderful, the history sharp, the climbing scenes awesome.

Kirkus Reviews