UK, 1991, 1st UK edition. 249 pp. A contemporary love story with an age-old theme, the eternal triangle. A successful and happily married mountaineer embarks on an affair with his tutor. Unfortunately he falls in love with her and is forced to choose between his mistress and his wife. At 30, Will is the epitome of the New Man: successful, a skilled mountaineer, happy in his 'equal and open' marriage. Then he falls in love with Kathleen, and his charmed life begins to fall apart as he discovers the strength of their passion and his inability to control it.
Set against the mythic and dangerous peaks of the Alps, MER DE GLACE strips the eternal triangle to its bare bones. Envy, joy, self-scrutiny; the perverse lure of melodrama and the vertiginous risks of surrender - vividly and perceptively Alison Fell charts the fantastical fortunes of love in a dislocated post-modern world. Winner of the Boardman-Tasker prize for mountaineering literature. DJ, hardcover, as New.
