Dimensions
139 x 224 x 38mm
As lonely adolescent boys in the Welsh hills, Rob Dewar and Jamie Matthewson were as close as friends can be. Both exiled from home and both fatherless, they shared a passion for the mountains and for climbing. So when, forty years on, Jamie is found dead at the foot of the Great Wall, a vertical, holdless slab of Welsh granite, Rob feels compelled to return to the place where they had grown up together, to confront the past.
Theirs is a story that begins before they were born, with their parents' own intense relationship: an unlikely three-way friendship of the glamorous predator Caroline; the vulnerable, courageous Diana; and the enigmatic Guy Matthewson, a great climber and a conscientious objector. The secrets these three share, born in the heat of war and common tragedy, are buried so deep it seems they may never be uncovered.
Simon Mawer's 'The Fall' is an irresistible narrative of courage and endeavour, a story that captures nature at its most beautiful and most brutal, and which unlocks the intricacies at the heart of human relationships.
