Grownup Time: Above All Things

My attendance at book club this year has been, for a variety of reasons involving schedules and mishaps and mayhem, spotty. But! those things have all cleared up, and now I am good to ride again, and so very happy about it, too. This month was an extra-special one that I didn’t want to miss for anything, either. We had the author as a guest!

Elle is a terrific host, always baking up a batch of what we refer to now as “crack bread” for us to feast on in her incredible kitchen. She covers her large island in edibles, and it is the perfect gathering spot for sitting around and chatting, creating a wonderfully relaxed and intimate atmosphere, even with an august +1 in attendance.

It was a new form of book club, with the opportunity to ask questions, and kept us talking about the book for longer than usual, which was especially interesting, as I think we all loved the book. Tanis was very easy to talk to, and had lots of details about how decisions were made that gave a fascinating inside view of the shaping of the novel, yet she was without an ounce of pretension, and fit in perfectly with the group for the casual chatting part of book club, too, even though she knew only one of us. She was a perfect fit, and it was great fun, but even better is this book, which I found hard to put down.

Above All Things
by Tanis Rideout
McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 978 0 771 07635 0

Historical fiction, adventure story, romance, and quest, this is a work with different facets, yet manages to stay tightly cohesive, with the various plots and characters complementing each other rather than competing or distracting. While we read about George Mallory’s final attempt to scale Everest, we are also reading about the experiences and feelings of one of his climbing companions, as well as his wife’s feelings about his absence and her own struggles to keep herself together even as she worries and misses him terribly.