Hazard's Way

by Roger Hubank

As members of the Fell and Rock gather to commemorate the fallen, George Hazard is carried back to Wasdale Head in the years before the First World War. Though greatly changed from what he was, he sees himself as a youth struggling to escape the stifling conformity of family life. On Scafell, Pillar, Gable, in company with the foremost climbers of the day, young Hazard discovers his kinship with a wider world. Meanwhile, his new friends begin to figure in that inner sanctum of the soul wherein a youth's idea of himself is formed, not as he is, but as he dreams of being. Friends, though, are not always what they seem. And looming ever larger, as the story approaches its climax, is the Pinnacle Face of Scafell. In company with a sinister schoolmaster, a disillusioned hero of the South African war, a Cambridge physicist desperate for success, the young man is drawn into a crisis familiar to all climbers. In this evocation of the Golden Age of Lakeland climbing Roger Hubank's new novel probes the compelling mythologies of mountaineering to uncover those illusions of heart and mind from which spring the tragedies of human nature.

248 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Roger Hubank is a novelist and mountaineer and also a winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize for mountain literature.

Reviews

[Lourdes Stephanie Aliaga Alza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es emblemática. Me atemoriza en el camino del sueño a las montañas. Es realista y cruda. Es un crecimiento paralelo entre lo profesional y la pasión, así como el resto de personajes que he visto en viajes.

[Jane Cable · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have a confession to make here - this novel was written by my cousin. Nevertheless it is a beautifully constructed then and now tale set in the Lake District and charting the fortunes of climbers both on and off the mountain slopes. What makes this book so exceptional is the author's use of language; Edwardian for the historical parts and modern for more recent times. It sounds obvious when you spell it out but it's subtle and creates great atmospheres.