When Nights Were Cold

    We've talked before about 'companion reading', books which complement one another in having themes or settings in common (there are examples here and here); having just read and greatly enjoyed Robert Macfarlane's Mountains of the Mind: a History of a Fascination, I'd offer Susanna Jones' unsettling psychological thriller When Nights Were Cold as a suitable companion piece. Each book has at its core the pull of the mountains, but here the draw of the Alps for the young Edwardian women who attempt to scale the Matterhorn stems from ideals of emancipation and self-actualization.

Growing up in London's Dulwich, Grace Farringdon avidly follows reports of the polar expeditions of Scott and Shackleton and longs to be an adventurer herself. But her family stifles talent and thwarts ambition, her parents intent on keeping Grace and her sister Catherine virtually sequestered from the outside world with only domestic pursuits to concern them. Grace, however, manages to get away to college, and at this all-female establishment she makes friends with three fellow students, Locke, Hooper and Parr. The four form an Antarctic Exploration Society to study expeditions and go walking and climbing in Wales and the Lake District, to emulate as far as possible their heroes' exploits. But when the more experienced Parr takes the group to the Alps, they experience what an ascent of that nature really means and come to understand what it can lead to or demand from a person.

    Farringdon's aim in climbing is to reach her "own Pole", prove herself in a taxing environment. But as she looks back from a distance of some years to the dramatic events of the 1910s, it is soon apparent that she is not what she seems, that she may be an unreliable narrator, increasingly out of kilter with herself and others, a person in whom repression seems to have wrought deep flaws. Her confessional account of what happened all those years before is gripping and chilling in equal measure. Atmospheric and intense, this is a beautifully balanced story of obsession.

Comments

[Dark Puss]

As a teenager I used to devour factual accounts of Arctic exploration (especially in Sammiland) and on mountaineering in general. Your last word piques my interest in this book. I'll see if I can borrow a copy. Oh! I see it is available at my local library; time to get out into the falling snow again I think.

[Cornflower]

I hope you'll enjoy it, DP!

[Dark Puss]

I made it through the snow, joined the other 40 people queuing up for the library to open at 11:00 and got the only copy. It has a totally different cover from the one you show in your post however. I'll let you know how I find the book.

[Cornflower]

The cover here is for the paperback which is due out shortly; you presumably have the hardback.
Please do let us know how you find it.

[Simon (Savidge Reads)]

Oh hoorah you have read this too. I oddly posted my review a few days after yours, I had decided to read it whilst being snowbound, though I had been meaning to read it since it was on the Fiction Uncovered initiative.

I think you liked this more than me, only because I was left a little unsatisfied by it and wanted more. I basically wanted it to be about 200 pages longer so all the back stories and sub plots had more air to breathe and room to grow if you know what I mean?

[Cornflower]

I know what you mean, Simon, but I liked that quite 'airless', stifled atmosphere which kept the various subplots partially hidden and hinted at things rather than making them explicit - the repression/obsession theme taken even further!

[Dark Puss]

I agree with Cornflower, this was an absolutely superb book. It took me back to the days when I was more active in the mountains than I have been in recent years. I've not done any proper climbing but I've been closer than I'd like to avalanches while walking in the Pyrenees and I have certainly walked in blizzard conditions and used my ice-axe on Lochnagar ascending to the plateau.

It made me want to get back out there right away. The book needed not a single extra word; I'll invent and dream my own stories to fill any gaps. Curiously I wasn't all that chilled by Grace's story not Parr's detached approach to life and death on the mountains ...

[Cornflower]

So glad to hear you enjoyed it!