Why am I passionate about this?
When I was 10, my father quoted to me the line by Henry David Thoreau, that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." This scared me deeply. It became an enduring question. What makes us feel truly alive? I love stories that take us to these edges. I like to explore what we chase - love, adventure, ambition, art - and where it goes wrong. I’ve long been drawn to stories about people who climb the world’s most dangerous mountains, putting themselves through unthinkable ordeals in places that don’t care if we live or die. And what of their friends, families and partners?
Roz's book list on high-altitude mountaineering
Why did Roz love this book?
We’re in fiction now. This is the story of Alice, a young professional woman with a settled life and reliable boyfriend, who jettisons it all when she meets Adam, a mountaineer. Adam is very broken, with PTSD after a tragedy in the mountains. I know climbers who would say the plot is sensationalist, but I’ve also met climbers who seem to have left their most vivid selves in that white otherworld. And this is the essential territory of Nicci French novels - people with dangerous edges and missing pieces, and how charismatic they are.
1 author picked Killing Me Softly as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
***Special anniversay edition, with a new introduction by Peter Robinson***
You're in passionate love. And grave danger . . .
Alice Loudon couldn't resist abandoning her old, safe life for a wild affair. And in Adam Tallis, a rugged mountaineer with a murky past, Alice finds a man who can teach her things about herself that she never even suspected.
But sexual obsession has its dark side - and so does Adam.
Soon, both are threatening all that Alice has left. First her sanity. Then her life.
'The pacing is spot on, and the tension keeps creeping up and up…