Product Description

Joe Simpson has experienced a life filled with adventure but marred by death. He has endured the painful attrition of climbing friends in accidents, calling into question the perilously exhilarating activity to which he has devoted his life. Probability is inexorably closing in. The tragic loss of a close friend forces a momentous decision upon him. It is time to turn his back on the mountains that he has loved. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see a last climb on the hooded, mile-high North Face of the Eiger as the cathartic finale. In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences from an avalanche in Bolivia, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain before his final confrontation with the Eiger, Simpson reveals the inner truth of climbing, exploring both the power of the mind and the frailties of the body. The subject of his new book is the siren song of fear and his struggle to come to terms with it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4351 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In The Beckoning Silence, climber Joe Simpson, author of the bestselling Touching the Void, recounts how his mountain dreams became shadowed by the deaths of friends and heroes, and hampered by the weight of probability that his own life would end in the same way. The result is a valedictory attempt on the North Face of the Eiger, a summation of his lifelong enchantment with climbing, and the parlaying of rock-solid risk with intangible rewards. It was a final adventure that would itself be touched by tragedy.

Simpson has established himself as the leading mountaineering writer of his time, and The Beckoning Silence is a bold reassertion of that status. Always strong on the personal meaning of the challenge, here he is superb on the bubbling fear that forms such a critical element of the climber's kit; the minutiae of circumstance that seemingly separate the survivors and the dead; and the crisis that envelopes a climbing partnership on the mountainside, at the instant extreme pressure disturbs the balance of shared ambition and ability.

Tat turned and looked speculatively up the corner and I felt even angrier that he might still be risking my life. What can you do if he insists? I mean, you can't pull him off. That would kill us. If he insists, then you'll have to un-rope. Jesus! Tell him that. "Tat?" I said quietly, hearing the fear in my voice.

The narrative takes Simpson to Bolivia, the Alps, Colorado and to the foot of the Eiger, where he receives a uniquely rich and moving tutorial on the history of the challenge that lies ahead. Simpson fans need know no more than that this may be his finest effort to date. For the uninitiated, there is simply no more evocative, emotionally literate author writing on this subject today.--Alex Hankin

Review
The mountaineer Joe Simpson is probably most known for his bestseller, Touching the Void, which recounts his epic battle for survival in the Andes after a horrifying climbing accident. In the intervening years Simpson has gone on to climb in some of the world's most challenging landscapes. Unfortunately he has also had to endure the loss of many climbing friends in accidents and this has increasingly caused him to question what it is that draws him to the mountains. With the approach of his 40th birthday and the death of a particularly close friend Simpson comes to a momentous decision - he will climb a selected shortlist of routes and then give it up. Here he recounts the psychological traumas that led him to make this surprising resolve. In harrowing detail he recalls the deaths of several of his fellow mountaineers, as often the result of bad luck as of misjudgement, and reveals his own doubts and fears when answering the mountains' siren songs. Simpson writes particularly well about his lifelong addiction to exhilaration and adrenalin highs - an addiction that is in direct competition with the growing certainty that, for him, it is no longer worth the risks. Above all, Simpson allows the reader to experience the biting cold, pain, gut-wrenching fear and elation of high-level mountaineering. After much soul-searching Simpson decides that an ascent of the North Face of the Eiger will be a fitting culmination of his climbing career and his attempt, along with climbing partner Ray Delaney, forms the compelling conclusion to this fascinating book. Whether Simpson will really be able to wean himself away from high places is another matter entirely; a man who has spent his whole life under the spell of their beckoning silence may always have to climb just one more time. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Joe Simpson won the Boardman Tasker Award and the NCR Award for his bestseller Touching the Void, which has been published all over the world. His later books, all bestsellers, include This Game of Ghosts, Dark Shadows Falling, Storms of Silence and a novel, The Water People.