Rideout, a young Canadian poet, traces Mallory’s expedition from Bombay to Darjeeling, through the Mahabharat Range and into Tibet. “Six foot high, with the body of an athlete by Praxiteles, and a face - oh incredible - the mystery of Botticelli,” swooned Lytton Strachey. Mallory is already famous, as well as famously good-looking. Flashbacks - to World War I, previous expeditions and the pair’s courtship - provide context. The narrative alternates chapter by chapter between his wife, Ruth, doing the laundry at home in Cambridge, and Mallory belaying on the slopes. It is 1924, and he is 37 and married, with three small children.
“Above All Things” relates the gripping story of Mallory’s third and final attempt to conquer Mount Everest. It’s fertile material for fictional recasting, and in her first novel Tanis Rideout adds a twist to the tale while making it entirely her own.
George Mallory, like Robert Falcon Scott, has departed the ranks of mere humanity and entered British consciousness as a Galahad of the snows, a titan who showed what a chap can do if he’s made of the right stuff.
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