Novel provides peak experience
Fictional story based loosely on 1924 expedition to Mount Everest
Tanis Rideout is a poet and novelist living in Toronto. Her first novel is Above All Things, which she tells us about below, but she has also written a full- length book of poetry called Delineation and was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the CBC Literary Awards.
Tell me a bit about your book: Above All Things is loosely based on George Mallory’s 1924 expedition to Mount Everest. It was his third time to the mountain and, despite promises to his wife Ruth, he was determined to succeed this time. The novel follows two separate storylines. One follows George and his fellow climbers over the course of months as they try to be the first to summit Mount Everest. The other storyline is a single day in the life of Ruth, his wife, waiting for word of when and if George will be returning home.
Where did the idea for this book come from? Years ago, I worked at an outdoor equipment store in Kingston, Ont. One of my coworkers was obsessed with all things Everest and would bring in videos to play in the store. They caught my attention immediately — I couldn’t imagine wanting to do something like that. One video, in particular, showed some of the footage from the very first expeditions and I was swept up in the ambition of it, the romance of it. I started reading everything I could get my hands on, became obsessed by George and what those men went through. I had to write a book to get it out of my head.
What are the challenges of writing a novel based on real events? I think the challenges of writing a novel based on real events shift from writer to writer, depending on how faithful you want to be to the historical record. There are compelling arguments both for and against that, I think. Sometimes, if you hold fast to the historical record then the story can suffer, if you go too far from the record I think sometimes readers can feel as though they were tricked. It’s a balancing act. I tend to always err on the side of emotion and story. I am writing fiction after all, there are fantastic history books out about Everest and George Mallory. When researching this book, you read dozens of letters written between George and Ruth — what was that experience like? It’s quite a strange experience; an emotional one. By the time I was able to go to England and read their letters I’d already been living with George and Ruth for some time, so it was quite emotional. The first beat of it feels very intrusive — I thought about someone reading my personal letters or papers and how that might make me feel, but then curiosity quickly took over and I devoured as many of them as I could. They were compelling and loving and sometimes sad. I laughed and cried quite a bit throughout it.