The great irony about climbing the eight thousanders is this: hubris on those mountains will get you killed, but it requires a great deal of hubris to climb those mountains in the first place. Or is that just me?
I love mountaineering stories, even though I have zero desire to crawl up one myself. I guess it’s the niche equivalent of watching football rather than playing it. Even if I had had the desire to put myself through something so strenuous, then Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air would’ve put me off it.
The interesting thing to Breathless is that its protagonist, Ceclly Wong, is not that interested in climbing a mountain either, but her job at an outdoor magazine is hanging by a thread. Noted mountaineer Charles McVeigh has hand-picked her to interview him and all she has to do in return is climb Manaslu, supposedly one of the easier climbs but still risky, especially to someone like Cecily, who can barely manage to climb a flight of stairs without tripping. But McVeigh is world-famous, and his attempts to climb the world’s 14 tallest mountains within a year is receiving a lot of publicity. Cecily desperately needs the interview and Charles will only give it to her once she summits, so despite her misgivings she joins the expedition. But all is not well. Soon, people begin to die on Manaslu, and not just because they’re on a mountain.
The problem with this book is that it’s in equal measures dumb and original. The setting is literally and figuratively outlandish. I know a little – not a lot – about mountaineering and it’s easy to tell that the author has done her research; in the afterword she actually says that she got the inspiration for the novel in the death zone (the part of the mountain above 8,000m where there’s so little oxygen in the air that your body is actively dying). I guess that explains the otherwise harebrained plot because if there’s anything I know about mountaineering, it is that people up there have no energy for things like murder.
Aside from that hiccup, the entire plot is completely bonkers. I could barely keep track of who wanted to do what to whom and why; there would’ve been so many easier ways to kill people and at the same time, the subplot – is Charles McVeigh a fraud – is far more interesting. I wish McCulloch would’ve focused on that; that would’ve been a much more interesting read. Instead, we get a plot so convoluted I could barely keep track, followed by an insufferable gotcha-ending.
Other parts of the novel, though, are fascinating. Again, McCulloch knows what she’s talking about, so Cecily’s woes as she tries to cross an icefall, learns to use crampons and carabiners, and deals with altitude sickness are really interesting. Life in Base Camp is basically a soap opera, and not in a bad way; mountains attract big egos and big egos tend to clash. Most of the characters are reasonably fleshed out, with the exception of the Sherpas, who are practically saints (and while that demographic definitely deserves to have the light shone on them, the whole noble savage approach is a bit much). The prose is a bit flat, but once I got used to it I didn’t mind so much anymore and seeing Cecily struggle her way up is relatable in the sense that I’d probably feel the same way. It’s just a pity that the main story is so insane. There’s a good novel buried in there somewhere, but it suffers at the hand of a hamfisted plot.