I've just finished reading this - the novel that won not only the Fiction category at Banff last year, but also the Grand Prize. I haven't seen a review of it on here so I thought I'd post a heads up.
The story follows the intense climbing partnership of Pete Hunter and Joe Holland as they pursue their obsession all across the US and the rest of the climber's world, but particularly in the Eastern Sierra around Bishop, California. Like any intense partnership theirs is a complex relationship of need, rivalry, resentment and love. There are echoes of Sal Paradiso and Dean Moriarty in Kerouac's On The Road. It is what gives meaning to their lives - until Pete dies. In the second half of the novel Joe is drawn back into climbing by Pete's son, Will, and thus begins a long quest for reconciliation and redemption.
The novel succeeds brilliantly in recreating through vividly observed detail the physical sensations and psychological states of climbing, both roped and solo. Howland's decades of climbing experience leap out as image after image sparks a little shock of recognition. Unless you know the Eastern Sierra well, you'll find yourself hard pushed to tell whether some of the routes and crags described are fictional or real. There are certainly moments when your palms may start to sweat. And if you've ever seen or survived a bad fall, prepare yourself for an emotional ride.
I'd put this close to M John Harrison's Climbers for literary quality. However, the modernism of Climbers does tend to divide opinion and a frequent criticism is that it fails to communicate the joy of climbing. Native Air is more conventional in its plot and characterisation and so I think will appeal more broadly - and it undoubtedly succeeds impressively in expressing the sheer and simple joy of moving over rock. And it does an equally good job with the fear, the frustration, the focus, the doubt, the relief, the trance-like lostness and the fleeting euphoria.
At present, Native Air is only available in print as a US hardback, but it is on Kindle. I'd urge any UKCer who enjoys literary fiction to get hold of it.
Post edited at 13:24
