Henry Holt and Company -- hcNew York -- ©2006 -- 341pp
ISBN-10: 0-8050-7867-3
After a tragic experience in World War II, a mountain climber has settled in to his life in academia until another tragic event forces him and a close friend in to making a treacherous climb.
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I think that Paul Watkins is one of the finest writers of today. His writing brings to mind the style of Hemingway, and his characters have the same kind of inner machismo, though without boasting of it.
It is very easy to get caught up in the prose and the characters that Watkins brings to life, but this book leaves something to be desired with its plot. While I fully understood the main character's lonesomeness and even later understood why, I never believed his desire for a certain young lady was anything but a mere physical attraction that would (or even should) develop into something more.
Too, one of the main protagonists was well set up as being the object of conflict, but we never see him again in the last 140 pages of the book. There, the conflict is the final climb and the mountain itself. In this sense, the book is as uneven as the terrain on which "Auntie" and Stanley make their journey
Still, I would much rather read a book by Paul Watkins that is lacking in some story, than most books by other authors.
An author worth reading, but not necessarily this particuar book until you've read a few of his others.
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