While one could be forgiven for thinking that young people today spend all their time staring at their phones or vaping, it turns out there are some engaged in healthier pursuits.
Take Californian teenagers Dan and Tamma, for example, the protagonists of Gabriel Tallent’s second novel, for whom rock-climbing in the Joshua Tree National Park is as important as breathing and who are planning a future spent scaling increasingly difficult mountains with only a few ropes and the strength of their bodies to keep them safe.
The pair have known each other since childhood, remaining close despite the enmity that has developed between their parents. Tallent creates an intriguing character in Alexandra, Dan’s mother, who achieved success with a debut novel but walked away from her writing career, a decision she has lived to regret.
Having saved $13,000 as a college fund for her son, she hopes he’ll have “the life I never could, a life with some hope to it”. Needing surgery, however, and uninsured, she’s reluctant to take the money back, and there’s a silent acknowledgment that, in the US, such a sum would barely get a student through his first semester, let alone a patient through a life-saving operation.
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The connection between Dan and Tamma is engaging and, as in Tallent’s previous book, My Absolute Darling, his focus is on the resilience of young people confronted by difficult family circumstances, exposing the raw courage that can lie beneath anxious facades.
It’s refreshing to read someone willing to show such positive aspects of youth. The rock-climbing sections, however, while obviously crucial to the novel, can feel a little exhausting. The author knows his sport but there are moments when one turns the pages hoping to return to the personal dynamics, rather than chalked palms and cliff faces.
The crux of the title refers to the toughest sequence of moves in a climb and Tallent draws connections between the teenagers’ passion and this moment in their lives, when the choices they make will affect their futures inexorably. They can hold tight and keep climbing or loosen their grip and fall. One of the strengths of the book is that the reader is eager to discover which they will choose.
John Boyne’s latest novel is The Elements
