Above All Things

Starred review from December 10, 2012
This vivid, assured, and confident debut novel scales great heights of obsession and desire, both on the face of Mount Everest and in the loving bond between doomed explorer George Mallory and his wife, Ruth. Against the backdrop of Mallory’s disastrous third expedition to attempt the summit in 1924, the explorer’s tenacity and motives get thoughtful treatment, as he muses that if there was “nothing worth dying for, neither could there be anything worth living for,” while Ruth, waiting for news and caring for their three children, is torn between understanding and resentment. For Ruth, this deep need to explore the world is what made it round rather than flat, her “desire to leave home... as strongly our desire to return.” Her catalogue of George’s comings and goings is a source of pain and hope and becomes all the more poignant as Rideout offers a gripping account of the expedition. The author’s accomplished depiction of the harsh and beautiful Himalayan heights, the physical drain of the climb, the bitter, brutal cold and thin, grudging air pushes the reader forward in a gripping adventure narrative, while Ruth’s own longings and fears offer a counterpoint of a more settled but no less intensely sensual interior landscape. The inevitable, terrible end remains in sight for the reader throughout, as compelling as the mountain peak that Mallory pursued at all costs. But Ruth’s reactions, from her own sense of foreboding to her surprising fortitude in the face of deep loss, reassuringly ground the novel with the sense, as another doomed climber mused, of how “time keeps passing when we’re away.” Agent: Ron Eckel, Cooke Intl. (Canada).

December 15, 2012
George Mallory is famous for answering "Because it's there" when asked why he kept trying to scale Everest, but Canadian Rideout's debut novel about Mallory's disastrous last climbing attempt is the story of a love triangle: a man, a woman and a mountain. After two failures, George has promised his wife, Ruth, that he is done with Everest, but in 1924, he leaves Ruth with their three small children in Cambridge, where he is a professor and part of the Strachey/Bloomsbury world, to join a third expedition to the mountain. He is 37-years-old, with movie-star looks and charm. Ruth supported his earlier attempts, but now she is jealous of his time away climbing. She is right to be jealous since the real love they feel for each other is no match for his hunger for adventure or for Everest, which is always referred to in feminine terms. Although a large portion of the novel takes place in Cambridge, where Ruth waits for letters from George while caring for her children, her domestic dramas--insecurity about her abilities as a mother, mild attraction to family friend Will, hostility toward Mr. Hinks, chairman of the Mount Everest Committee, who sponsored the expedition--cannot compete with the drama on Everest itself. George feels the need to vindicate himself on this trip after an avalanche disaster that killed seven Tibetans during the last attempt. Five members of the team have attempted Everest together before. The new member, Sandy Irvine, is much younger, still a university student and eager to prove himself, especially to George. Petty tensions arise among the men bound so closely in isolation, but there is indescribable intimacy as well as they face life-and-death challenges on a daily basis. A plodding quality slips in, the sense that Rideout is following the historical dots, but she does a terrific job describing both the extreme physical conditions and the dreamlike consciousness George and Sandy drift into as their memories of home intertwine with their moment-to-moment climb.

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September 1, 2012

Having published widely in journals and been short-listed for various awards, Rideout here reimagines George Mallory's assault on Everest from the perspective of his wife. In 1924, as Mallory readies his third expedition, lovely young Ruth says, "Tell me about this mountain that's stealing you away from me."

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
Because it's there. George Mallory's famous riposte to the question of why he attempts to scale Mount Everest satisfies everyone but his wife, Ruth. Theirs is a passionate romance, though one increasingly strained by Mallory's insatiable need to crest a mountain that has vanquished him twice before, leaving his reputation in tatters after seven crew members died on his previous expedition. Given yet another chance to conquer the mountain, Mallory reneges on his promise to Ruth and mounts one final expedition. While Ruth soldiers on at their Oxford home, buoyed by family and friends but unsettled by relentless anxiety, Mallory and his team endure unimaginable hardships as they set out for the top of the world. With a gripping, you are there realism, Rideout's powerful prose evokes the scalpel-like sting of arctic winds and the bone-shattering cold of frigid mountain nights. Impeccably researched, Rideout's vividly authentic debut historical novel is a paean to the ability of love to conquer all but the highest mountains.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)