Why climb a mountain? Because it’s there. Sir George Leigh Mallory’s famous explanation has haunted the imagination since its utterance, yet for those who have never climbed, its meaning remains as inscrutable, as tantalizing, as enigmatic as the jutting snow-shrouded palisades of the mountain at the heart of this novel. On that mountain’s slopes is set the story of a climber and her ascent to escape from her past.
Artemis Phillips has been a climber for most of her life. With her brother Orion and her husband Nicholas Rhodes she has traveled to some of the world’s great ranges and achieved fame as an accomplished mountaineer. When she joins a women’s expedition in Nepal, she is only dimly aware of the forces which push her up the slopes, but it becomes clear that she desires atonement.
Elizabeth Arthur proves again that she is a writer of formidable talent. Beyond the Mountain shows us people in extremis and illuminates the complexities of our lives. In the end, the novel is an affirmation – of independence and the fellowship of man.
