Page 54 - 2018 AMA Summer

BOOKREVIEW
AMA BOOK REVIEWS
UNKNOWN PLEASURES
ANDY KIRKPATRICK
(by Vertebrate Publishing)
The sub-title sort of gives this one away, ‘collected writing on life, death, climbing and everything in between’. Unknown Pleasures is the first ‘collected works’ of the climber, mountaineer, writer, comedian, poet, and film-maker Andy Kirkpatrick.
So if you happen to have the
time or the inclination to read a broad church of literature of and associated with mountaineering, there is every chance you will have read some of the material before. Equally if you have seen Kirkpatrick live, you may well have heard him recounting some of the stories on stage.
First and foremost this book reminds me of Kiss and Kill (by Mark Twight) in that it is a collection of no-holds barred essays and articles from publications that were bold enough to publish angsty, confrontational, challenging writing. Well done them. Twight published the background notes to the articles in his book in subsequent reprints of it, Kirkpatrick has included his, to many of his articles, in the back of this book. These notes offer some small glimpses to where Kirkpatrick was (mentally and geographically) in some of his work.
In his foreword, about the contents of the book, Kirkpatrick writes ‘ within this book there will be words to love and words to hate, but I promise you, none of them will be boring’, and he’s right. Very right. Some of the opinion pieces will grate and some of his perspectives will annoy anyone that reads the book. He is what he is. His climbing CV shouts for itself, and on that alone, one could argue, he has the right to have and to voice an opinion.
The writing is sparse. Like it was in Psychovertical (winner of the 2008 Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature), and Cold Wars (winner of the same award in 2012). It leaves space for the reader to use their imagination. It describes rather than evokes. It is high in protein and low in fat. His writing has already had plaudits heaped upon it by the mountaineering literature world, but this collection of work covers a far far broader subject area. Psychologists and sociologists would find stuff in here to dig their teeth in to.
The structure of the book is essentially five lots of articles of varying lengths (from a couple of pages to sixteen pages), inter- spersed with ‘Bad Poetry’, which again both is and isn’t what it says on the tin. The articles relate (loosely) to the subjects of ‘Climbing, Expeditions and Adventure’, ‘Looking On’’, ‘Gear and Technique’’, ‘Life, death and in between’ and ‘Unidentifi-
able’. The book is hand illustrated by Kirkpatrick. I would pay good money for many of those illustrations. Do take the time to read the short explanation of the origins of his drawing. It’s anchored firmly, along with a lot of who he is and what he has become, in his childhood.
So if I were to list stand out articles they probably wouldn’t survive contact with the next reader. But anyway ...‘The Troll’s Gift” for an insight in to the psychological demands of big wall climbing in winter. “No Better Knot’ for Kirkpatrick finding his mooring. ‘Pizza” for the words on trust. ‘Rabbit Stories’, ‘Unidentifiable’, ‘Dog’ ..... ‘A mile down the road’ resonates deeply ... but again, this isn’t ‘just’ a climbing book, it’s thirty two stories about far far more than ‘just’ climbing, and therefore the hooks are many and varied. It’s a very good book,and one that I would recommend not reading it in order. I can recommend reading the ones that grate or hurt or that you don’t finish, perhaps going back to them later. If you’ve read “Kiss or Kill’ you probably did a similar thing. They’re similar books in many ways.
‘Within this book there will be words to love and words to hate, but I promise you none of them will be boring’ – Andy Kirkpatrick
TIDES
NICK BULLOCK
(by Vertebrate Publishing)
The second book (after the critically acclaimed Echoes) from that bloke that used to be a prison warden then jacked it all in to live in a small van and live that climbing life.
The title of the book, reflected
across the chapters therein,
refers to the ebb and flow of
the climbing life that Nick has
chosen to live. When the tide is high Nick is riding it and pushing the envelope across the full range of climbing disciplines, with some of the best climbers in the world today, from the cliffs of Gogarth to the massive unclimbed faces of the Himalaya. When the tide is out the doubts and the fears and the failings and the questions are left.
Nick’s writing is rich in detail across all its subjects. Nature, humans, fear, the act of climbing, relationships, cold, patience, anger, loss, .... all of them detailed finely. His is a writing style that colours the pictures in for the reader. There is humour too, the type honed in high-security prisons. Dark, sharp, quick.
The book in essence is a series of short tight chapters, often interlinked, of his climbing life (since 2003). Several of the
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