Customer Reviews

K2: One Woman's Quest for the Summit (Adventure Press)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the worst mountianeering book I have ever read. Heidi Howkins may have accomplished great feats in her mountianeering career, but writng books is not one. This book is more of an account of the mess she has made of her personal life, rather than high adventure. If you are looking to read about the beauty and tragedy of K2, you will not find it here. You will find failure, and blame. It is a horrible jumbled account of several experiances, several of which do not belong in print.

I believe that, had Howkins left out the rambling and disorienting narrative style (and abolished the Hiddle character forever), this might have been a great book. For the most part, her storytelling is riveting, and she ranks among the best as far as describing the technical aspects of climbing. I only wish that one of her editors had asked for revisions, revisions, revisions, because the hitchhiker device is almost enough to completely ruin a good story. It is contrived, and one has to skip almost all of the conversation to find the good parts about the Himalayan climbs. The only thing I can imagine, is that Hiddle is in fact a phantom, a residue hallucination from spending a bit too much time above 23,000 feet.

When you read a title that reads "K2 a quest for the summit" you expect a story about how somebody got to the summit, Heidi did not. This is the story of a woman searching for herself who happens who like mountaineering. I wanted a book about mountaineering and got the troubles and tribulations of a woman in search of herself. Bad read.

K2: A Women's Quest for the Summit

The approach to which Heidi Howkins told us her story was both atypical and captivating. By obtaining a permit, permitting Howkins to attempt the deadly slopes of K2, her fist attempt in 1998 was am unmitigated failure. However, Howkins became one of the first women to attempt this perilous peak. On her second attempt in 2000, she was determined to once again mount the summit of K2 but this time without the aid of porters or supplemental oxygen (an accomplishment made by very few mountaineers). Although Howkins knew the risks of her exigent goal of the summit, not even her long experience of climbing could prepare her for such events that occurred high on K2. This book contains multiple photographs of K2 that show what a physical and personal feat it would be to climb to the summit of this mountain successfully. While on this expedition Howkins explores through her emotions as a single mother, a confused climber, and the subject of her last husband Zee's abuse. As she searches for her true passion for climbing she uses her inner strength that is given to her by her daughter to attempt K2, hoping to accomplish her task.
When I first decided to read this book, by reading the title I assumed it would be about the struggles of climbing and techniques used to reach the summit of the mountain. Although Heidi explains some of her expeditions the book really explains her personal life and how she uses climbing as an escape to her chaotic emotions. My impression of K2 is it has a confusing plot line. As Heidi explains her expeditions on other mountains in the Middle East to a hitchhiker that she picked up, she gets into her expedition on K2 and all the events that occurred without finishing her stories about her expeditions that she was explaining before. This book is both very interesting and emotional. In Inherit the Wind, the young lady Rachel also had emotional problems like Heidi. Heidi's emotions were between her abusive husband Zee and her new lover that had become her climbing partner, where Rachel had emotional problems between her father and her current lover Bertrum Cates. The social value of this book is the information that is told by Heidi how to deal with her fearful emotions. Teenagers and older adults could connect with Heidi and they can compare their emotions and insights to Heidi's.
This book is well written in great detail; however the organization of this book where Heidi talks about her previous expeditions confuses and quickly looses the reader. I would suggest this book to teens or adult readers because of the high vocabulary level and because of the harsh events that occur high up on this treacherous mountain.

Ms. Howkins is a professional mountain climber who is not afraid to take on the tough ones. She has attempted K2, the roughest of the big ones; Gasherbrum II, the north face of Kanchenjunga, and Everest without supplementary oxygen. In other words, she's won her spurs.

The narrative device is the author telling her story and thoughts to a hitchhiker. This is supposedly the staging area for each chapter. It is not a successful mechanism and seems needlessly contrived. The book takes a few scenes from Kanchenjunga where Ms. Howkins found romance with a Spanish climber, a brief narrative of her first K2 climb with her ex-husband, who appears to be a certified mad man, and the remainder is devoted to her second K2 climb, Project K2000.

The book badly needs organization; the reader is frequently confused about what expedition she is talking about, and continuity is completely absent. While reading, I had the impression she was lifting passages from her private journals and entering them in a scattershot fashion. I later found out that almost the entire section on Project K2000 had first appeared in Mountain Zone. The author barely characterizes her teammates on Project K2000; she doesn't even give their last names. It is as if Ms. Howkins was confronting faceless enemies. I have read many times about how difficult it is for women climbers to be accepted in the male fraternity of mountaineers, but the treatment Ms. Howkins endured was appalling: ignoring her, referring to her by obscene names, trashing her tent. I couldn't believe well-educated, civilized men would behave in such a fashion toward the one lone woman on their team. She states that if she had been a wife or companion of one of the members, there probably would have been less friction.

I found Ms. Howkins likeable, smart and perceptive with a flair for the lyrical. However, the book lacks a focus and seems hastily put together. C-

When one thinks of female athletes, female scientists, female bomber pilots such as Kelly Flinn, one thinks of them as being successful and therefore confident and independent, and vice versa. It comes as a shock and a disappointment to read that they stay in abusive relationships for more than a day. Yet such is the case with Heidi Howkins, who stayed in an abusive relationship with her husband Zee for way too long (even when he'd once tried to kill her she stayed with him because he threatened to take her daughter away to Syria).

She tells that story and more in K2: A Quest For The Summit. Eventually she frees herself from Zee, she rises above the obstacles placed in her way from other climbers in this male-dominated world. She's a good writer and tells the story well.

It's not a story of one climb but of several, it's a series of memoirs, really. Why does Howkins use the hitchiker 'Hiddle' as a foil - someone to tell her stories to? Other reviewers of this book have dismissed him as a fictional character, (and a bad device at that) - yet nowhere in the book does Howkins say that he is...so why do they assume so? Because it's impossible to believe a man could sit in a car with a woman and listen to HER talk? Pay attention to HER talk? If Hiddle the hitch-hiker is a fiction, why did Howkins think it necessary to use this foil? Well, their conversations do illuminate her stories the more...for example in the beginning with his talk of 'Ananku' or trouble. She is capable of learning from her adventures, long after they have passed.

''Go ahead, I'm listening.'' she has Hiddle say. One wonders if in the real world she ever had a man who said that to her, and meant it.

K-2, One Woman's Quest for the Summit reveals a very reflective, contemplative woman who is unimpressed by her own brilliance. (MIT invited - not merely accepted - her to do a Ph.D. Program in math and philosophy.) Heidi Howkins is not limited by her own intellect or the vanity that can come from being bright. She looks beyond it all pushing herself in more gritty ways. Instead of pursuing the intellectual lofty world of philosophy she chooses the physical and mental challenges of the brutal world of mountains. Yet, throughout the book, you feel she is comfortable in both worlds and will, no doubt, go on to write some worthwhile treatise in philosophy someday.

Heidi Howkins is one of the most down to earth people you could possibly meet. Nothing about her signals that she has jumped out of planes, is brilliant in mathematics and climbs mountains. When asked why she climbs mountains, she mockingly shrugs, "with a name like Heidi, what do you expect?" Heidi said one day someone told her, "reach for the moon and you may land on Everest." She has reached Everest but K-2 holds greater challenges: it is a harder climb, it is steeper, more rugged. That's probably what draws her to it, to overcome the fear and challenge of such an obstacle. One finds throughout this book that overcoming is what Heidi Howkins is all about.

This book is a rare glimpse of life in mountaineering. It is rare because we see the inside fighting, the jealousy, and the petty arguments amongst mountaineers. The actual mountain proves less strenuous than the world of small mindedness and prejudice. We see some of the climbers' courage contrasted with others whose show out and out cowardice. On one expedition to Everest we see a whole group fail to stand up to the bullies in their midsts. The bullies are bullies not because they are afraid of the climb, but rather they are naturally cruel, stupid and mean.

Not that this is a whiny book. Far from it, nothing is cliché or obvious. You never know where this journey is leading but it pulls you along maintaining a relentless intensity. Howkins' greatest challenge may have been endeavoring to climb K-2 with an untrustworthy husband as their marriage disintegrates and her husband's mind does the same. He becomes ever more troubled, angry and homicidal. We never know exactly why Heidi married such a man apart from a shared love of mountain climbing. Though he is a major feature of this book, he seems to be insufficiently fleshed out. This may be due to the fact that he is the father of her child whom she may wish to protect. But if this is the only insufficiency of the book, it is a small one.

For one so gifted one hopes Howkins will be cut free from all encumbrances that could possibly hold her down. This first book is beautifully written, sheer poetry in parts without any of the prosaic observations of majestic and mighty heights. Howkins notes that "when you get tot he top of K-2 there's nowhere left to go". She has yet to conquer that summit, when she does, I hope she goes on to some other summit, physical or intellectual and writes about it. I hope we will not have heard the last form Heidi Howkins

Just wanted to set the record straight on the review of Ms. Howkins' book on K2 by Publishers Weekly. Kangchenjunga and K2 are two distinct mountains, the author of that review seemed to think these names were synonymous (unless he/she meant that in 1997, she applied for a permit for both). K2 is the world's 2nd highest and Kangchenjunga, the 3rd. I reviewed this book as a five because Ms. Howkins certainly has a very interesting and no doubt ambitious story of her summit quests. I wish her lots of success...