Product Description

Since his epic battle for survival in the Andes, recounted in the bestselling Touching the Void, Joe Simpson has endured several further brushes with death and has suffered the loss of many climbing friends in accidents which call into question the exhilarating, death-defying activity to which he has devoted his whole life. Never more alive than when most at risk, he has come to see an attempt on the Eiger, with its hooded, mile-high North Face, as the culmination of his climbing career.In a narrative which takes the reader through extreme experiences from an avalanche in South America, ice-climbing in the Alps and Colorado and paragliding in Spain – before his final confrontation with the Eiger and two more deaths – 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: #3571 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

Synopsis
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.

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.

Customer Reviews

Eiger experiences
In the world of mountaineering writing Joe Simpson is without peer. There seem to be two reasons for this. First, Simpson is one of those people to whom things just keep happening. Famously, in "Touching the Void", he shatters a leg in a fall, is left to die at high altitude by his climbing partner and yet still struggles to safety. In other books, he gets swept up by avalanches, caught up in snowstorms and suffers many other close scrapes. Eventually, in this book, as he reflects on the near misses and the number of his friends who have died in various misadventures, Simpson decides to hang up his crampons for good. But before he does so, he decides to tackle the infamous north face of the Eiger, known as the "Mordwand" or Murder Face by the locals because of the large number of climbers dying in an attempt to climb it. A mile-high, sheer cliff of rock and ice, the Mordwand has been an unforgiving test of a climber's ability over the years though, according to Simpson, advances in the quality of equipment have made it much more feasible. One of the local guides points out that with advances in mountain rescue that despite the Eiger's grim reputation that it had been many years since the last death on the face. But Simpson is somebody to whom things happen and as he sets foot on the face, people start falling off.

But that's not the whole reason. There are many other climbers who have written of death-defying adventures. Simpson's second asset is that he's also a superb tailor of prose. He describes the climbs and hang-gliding flights in such vivid detail yet with such pace that you feel as if you're there with him. And this is where Simpson wins out over other mountaineering writers who simply write of their experiences -- Simpson's natural storytelling skills draw you in rather than leaving you feeling that you've read a bare, dry narrative.

One small detail had a personal appeal to me. Simpson talks of how he read Harrer's "The White Spider" (the book detailing the first ascent of the Mordwand) as a child and it convinced him that he never wanted to be a mountaineer, yet he became one. I also read it as a child and it convinced me that I *did* want to, but I never followed it up. Ironically, it's now reported that the White Spider is no longer a fiendish ice field, destroyed by global warming.

I'm not going to spoil things by saying whether Simpson is successful in his climb or not, but clearly he survives to write the book! At the end though, there's some doubt as to whether this really was the final climb. I hope that, if it wasn't, Simpson will continue to share his adventures with us.

Joe at his most thoughtful
I am a huge fan of mountaineering literature and I especially enjoy a pacy tale, however The Beckoning Silence moves at quite a slow pace and appropriately so. In this book Joe Simpson is feeling the effects of advancing years, losing his nerve. So many of his friends have died tragically that he comtemplates abandoning mountaineering altogether. He reflects on his early years considering that he was perhaps obsessed at that time.
A friend encourages him to have one last hurrah - to climb the mountain that inspired him to become an mountaineer in the first place - the Nordwand of the Eiger - aka the Mordwand because of the death toll of climbers who perished attempting to scale the wall.
Joe gives an interesting account of the history of the Eiger and explores his own fears and reason for them in great depth. Certain paragraphs of this book are so beautifully written I am tempted to take it up again. It is an elegy combined with mountaineering adventure.

Mid life crisis?
This is a stunning book from Joe Simpson; I prefer it to Touching the Void. The account of his ascent up the north face is a masterclass in storytelling.

But it's more than a book about climbing a mountain, or the history of climbing that mountain, which is covered well and sensitively. It's about the journey of life; how one changes as the years pass, and friends disappear. Anyone who has been through such life events will identify with Simpson wrestling with his conscience as he ponders why he does what he does. And you get a better answer than 'because it's there'.