Afraid of heights
Amy McCulloch’s new novel “Breathless” (Anchor Books) gives new meaning to the term highstakes thriller: It’s set on a mountain, specifically Manaslu, the eighth-highest peak in the world. Journalist Cecily Wong has come to Nepal to interview world-famous mountaineer Charles McVeigh on the last leg of a series of summits. He’s promised her that if she climbs with his team, he’ll give her an exclusive interview. Her career depends on reaching the top. When one climber dies in an apparent accident, it casts a pall over the group. When a second climber dies soon after, it becomes clear there might be a killer in their group — and it’s too late for them to turn back.
McCulloch is a mountaineer herself. While writing the book, she drew inspiration from some of her own experience, including a confrontation with a man in her group who made sexual overtures to her.
“He was rejected, but it was constant, accompanied by uncomfortable banter,” says McCulloch. “And when I went to bed at night I was very aware that there was only a thin sheet of tent plastic between me and this guy.”
Prior to 2017, she had never climbed.
“I would not have even classified myself as a very outdoorsy person,” she says. She got married, and then divorced within a short amount of time.
“Suddenly, the path I thought I was taking disappeared in front of me,” she says. “I was totally lost. I didn’t know what to do with myself. So I booked a weeklong walking trip to Ireland. I decided to do the Cheryl Strayed thing and walk myself to truth.”
It ignited a love of walking. Next was Nepal, where she did the Annapurna trek. She saw the huge mountains for the first time and was in awe of it all.
“Then I went on a date with a guy that had just come back from Kilimanjaro, and I thought, I could do that too!” she says.
“He invited me to a mountain in Morocco on New Years Day 2018 [Toubkal, the highest mountain in Morocco] and we watched the sunrise come up over the Sahara. And that’s when I caught Summit Fever.”