Customer Reviews

The Night Climbers: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ivo Stourton's night climbers are young, Cambridge University students. "Climbing" has all the right associations in this novel: the characters actually ascend Campus buildings to dizzying heights; they are climing to isolate themselves by surmounting the rest of us. This is social climbing, cult-driven climbing and ultimately climbing to grasp a sort of awareness about choice and the need to chose well. There are significant pages devoted to art in general, and whether the price really does define the product, and these are well-worth pondering.

At a more general leve, the idea of night climbing calls to mind the Platonic dialogue involving epistemology; specifically, the problem of knowing how and what you know as you climb throught a mist of fog that precludes visual clarity and limits the certainty about what is or can be known. The night can bring the city into sharp clarity for the climbers, and it can just as easily create instances where they are duped. The night climbers are, throughout this simply remarkably well-written work, wrestling with what they think they understand.... Read this book and let the games begin.....!

This book held my interest and was entertaining (maybe partly because I attented Cambridge University for a semester and therefore recognized some of the references), but often felt melodramatic and predictable. The story focused on the lives and relationships of four friends and a secret they shared. However, considering that this book read like character study, the development of personalities and relationships could have been more complex. I would read more by this author as he definitely is an elegant writer.

This elegantly written novel is all about the tragic sacrifice of devotion and the ensuring complications of a friendship that sets in motion of a series of events which finally roll to a halt a decade later in the snowy streets of suburban London and Cambridge. Central to the story is that of the wealthy lawyer James Walker and his reflections of his life at the prestigious Oxbridge college in Cambridge.

Raised in the school of hard knocks and coming from a rather poor social vantage point, James is a trifle awed at having the opportunity to attend such a prestigious school. Cut off almost completely from his peers and not really knowing whom to approach, James welcomes the arrival of Michael Findlay, who erupts into his life along with his group of glamorous, rich friends called the Tudor Night Climbers, who get their kicks out of climbing onto rooftops and leading a pleasure-seeking lifestyle.

The head of the group is the seductive and hedonistic Francis Manley who entices the impressionable James with his tales of his life in Zimbabwe and his aristocratic pretensions, particularly that of his father Lord Soulford who is currently trying for nomination as the local Conservative candidate. Soon enough, life for James has taken on the seductive glow of possibility and the promise of fulfillment, with Francis his only link to the shadowy and glamorous world of fox hunting afternoons, clandestine boxing matches, and drug-fuelled parties.

To James, Francis is "a fighter," the embodiment of all that James wishes he could be, and someone who has been raised all his life in the midst of a fortune the likes of which James had only encountered in books and glossy magazines. As his friendship with Francis develops, James becomes ever more carried away with the joy of total superiority, while also falling under the spell of the beautiful Jessica Katz who becomes his partner in crime and also a type of co-protector for the reckless Francis.

As James falls under this group's spell, the spires and turrets of Oxbridge College provide a glamorous backdrop to all of the unfolding events. It is here on the roof of Tudor Court, with Cambridge bathed in a watery winter sunshine and everything appearing in extraordinary detail, that James sees Francis for who he really is: a conflicted young man who makes you want to suspend disbelief so you can drink more of his magic while also fooling you with his financial and romantic intrigues.

Francis earns most of his money from his fighting, but he spends it and he's always in trouble with the bookies, and a whole host of creditors. With his father threatening to cut off his inheritance, and rather than drag his friends through the depression and despair of having no more money, Francis hatches a scheme to forge a Picasso currently owned by Oxbridge College. James, Jessica, and Lisa, the fourth member of the group, conspire to help their hero pursue his outlandish scheme, even as they risk becoming embroiled in theft, tax evasion, and the inevitable intimations of blackmail.

As James looks back on all of these events, he releases both memory and a longing to probe once more into the volatile passions that once surged beneath Francis's façade. When Francis's true nature begins to protrude, a hard seam of self-destruction starts to assert itself that endures long after the excitement and zest through which it had run has worn away.

Author Ivo Stourton writes passionately about the bonds of friendship and the price of being misunderstood. Much of Francis's later life is shaped by the vulnerable impressions that he once formed of his best friend, and in the end even Jessica realizes that she's invested too much of herself in the risky enterprise of Francis. Both are more than willing to hold up a spiritual candle and a type of allegorical shrine to Francis's long-suffering existence.

Obviously your enjoyment of this novel will depend on how interested you are in experiencing the trials a group of the risk-dependent college kids and the feelings of a vulnerable young man who tries to live vicariously through them even when he's in danger of collapsing into a quagmire of moral certainty. Although Stourton's characters are mostly self-absorbed and habitually unsympathetic, and not that particularly likable, there's still much entertainment to be had in the author's inventive storyline and also his willingness to portray the seamier and more decadent side of upper-class college life. Mike Leonard October 07.

Eighteen years old Tudor College of Cambridge University freshman James Walker is a bit awed at being at the prestigious school, but that will not preclude his desire to party with pretty coeds. Still he fears he will be left on the outside unless he befriends the in-crowd whoever they are.

James meets Michael Findlay and he leads the newcomer to a bunch of thrill-seekers who welcome him to join their group, the Tudor Night Climbers. Although he has some doubts about climbing buildings and other edifices at night he joins them. He quickly is attracted to Jessica Katz, but she seems to desire the dynamic leader Francis. When Francis' father cuts off his funding (and consequently the group), they follow up on an idea by one of them, Lisa, to continue to finance their climbing way of life Emboldened by Francis; they remain naive that fourteen years later they will still be paying the price.

THE NIGHT CLIMBERS is a fascinating complex (perhaps too complicated with its myriad of subplots) group character study. The building climbing apparently is based on a 1960s fad (although this reviewer does not know of any Queens College climbers). Each of the key characters are fully developed and ultimately tied together by the scheme more than by the climbing or the attraction. Ivo Stourton provides an appealing glimpse at the tentative bonds of friendship.

Harriet Klausner

The Night Climbers, set in Cambridge, has a group of aspiring young jet-setters dabble in an art scam that soon proves more than they can handle. James, the narrator, is desperate to be adopted into a glamour-circle of older students of which Francis, the half-African, illegitimate son of an arch-Conservative lord, and the college beauty Jessica form the core. At first, their life together is a whirlwind of country trips, clubbing, drug-taking, and general daring of which the art heist, and the night-climbing, are but a part. But Francis's brilliant but dissolute lifestyle soon threatens to rob them of their ill-gotten gains, with life-threatening consequences.

The Night Climbers is well-paced and well-written, polished but without wasteful pauses. Though it also takes the reader through London and Monaco, as a Cambridge-based novel it makes a good job of describing the city and university. The night-climbing side plot, indeed, is supposedly not an invention, but based on a real if somewhat obscure tradition. I even went to check whether the leap from the Senate House's roof to Caius college was possible, and the scene in the book is realistic in the main, and the distance between the two buildings correctly given. If Stourton's debut novel is about anything beyond entertaining its reader, furthermore, it is surely about transgression. A perceptive work, it does a good job of making one reflect on the meaning and cost of transgressing social and moral norms, in more than one scene or way.

Finally, this has been compared to Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Indeed, both are college-set and both have a narrator scrambling to belong to a tightly-knit and alluring but amoral club of older students. The resemblances end here, however, and I found The Night Climbers the stronger book of the two. While the incident at the core The Secret History is, I felt, somewhat contrived, Stourton's book has no such handicap: it is consistent, coherent, and inherently readable until the end.

On a quick walk through the bargain books at Barnes and Noble, I picked up this hardcover, The Night Climbers, intrigued initially by the poignant cover of a gargoyle perched atop a building. A quick scan of the inside flap, and I was on my way home to start the novel.

I was immediately captivated by Stourton's use of language -- I can't recall ever having read words more expressive and entrancing, at times bringing goose bumps to my skin. The story itself is arranged beautifully as well, a coming-of-age exploration of what it means to be accepted, loved, and alive, and Stourton jumps back and forth between the present, and the past--which has seemingly come back to haunt the main character. The novel is haunting, at times stark, and intensely honest, and I would easily put this book at the top of my list of favorites in fine literature. Five stars, only because there is nothing higher!

- By Julia Dudek, author of the psychological thriller, Pieces

There are a wide assortment of books [fictitiously] purported to be 'The Secret History' (D. Tartt); 'The Night Climbers' is just one in a series. Before I waste any of your time: It fails. Tremendously. Probably the biggest issue is that Stouton is clearly (or, if not himself, his PR and publishers) trying to ensnare the more erudite and intellectual of contemporary literature readers. By the very nature of who would likely be attracted to the book, Stouton's writing caters more to a quick beach-read type of audience. Not inherently wrong, flawed, or bad; rather, the writing (and the likely intended audience) don't mesh well whatsoever.

I had purchased this with the (clearly incorrect) hopes that the novel would be cultured, academic, and thoughtful. Suffice to say, it accomplished none of the holy trinity.
In a vacuum, Ivo Stouton's book is wholly unremarkable: the writing is mediocre (speaking loudly of having taken some creative writing seminars, but lacking any sort of intellectual framework) and peppered with pithy commentary that tries all-too-hard to emit an aura of aloof brilliance. There are a few off-the-cuff cultural references, but mostly I found it to be a bunch of psuedo-intellectual babble, written more as a projection of Stouton's own fantasies than to any sort of literary aspiration.

The book follows a confluence of events surrounding four undergraduate students at Tudor College, Cambridge. James, an entering freshman, tries desperately to emit a sense of self-assured mystery (which backfires: he finds himself alone after a few weeks), with the hopes of gleaning the attention of an intriguing group of four students: Michael, Francis, Jessica, and Lisa. This group of four engages in the eponymous activity - climbing the drainpipes, scaffolding, grotesques, and other elements of the Cambridge architecture (see: "The Night Climbers of Cambridge," a 1953 monographic non-fiction imprint of the same behavior). By chance, James encounters Michael - and then is slowly integrated into the social circle. Francis is fabulously wealthy, and supports all of them in an extravagant lifestyle of cocaine, alcohol, and decadent excursions. Michael soon falls by the wayside (and is unceremoniously eliminated from the story (a la Bunny, from 'The Secret History,' though painfully less interesting), having interfered in an altercation between Francis and his father.

The crux of the story occurs when, per the aforementioned altercation, Francis is no longer the recipient to his father's vast fortunes. The remaining four hatch a scheme, originally proposed by Francis (with whom the other three in the social circle are smitten), to acquire a non-negligibly large sum of money. As expected, this monetary acquisition is far from legal, and creates a maelstrom of unfolding events within the group that reverberate into their adult lives. Ho hum.

My main criticisms? ...Let's start.
The plot itself is boring and unpredictable. There has been a large cropping-up of books preoccupied with art, forgery, esoterica, &c in the past decade. Had Stouton written this fifteen years ago, it may have seemed fresh and interesting; it seems like a tired, worn story by 2009. Engagement with the plot was difficult; things don't pick up until some 130 pp into the story. It seems that Stouton's trying to breed curiosity and interest in the reader, but it comes off as unfocused meandering.

The characters are flimsy, and one-dimensional. None of the internal behaviors of the individuals are explored, in any sense, through the progression of the story: feeling any empathy towards Francis, James, Lisa, or Jessica is virtually impossible. Everything is narrated by James: first person narration, as any reader knows, is the most difficult form by which to convey suspense or mystery. Tartt's resounding success with 'The Secret History' is her incredible capacity to drift tantalizing suspense and curiosity while still writing from first-person.
At any rate, James does little particular exploration of his philosophies and thoughts. The story is told unenthusiastically and boringly; his internal monologues are stilted and come across as forced. Though the narration switches sporadically between present-day and Cambridge-day, the temporal shifts don't account for how predicably linear the story itself remains.

In all areas, I found this novel to be a disappointment. It's length was the real reason I bore through to the end: I read it over two days, and found it only the most precursory form of entertainment. An academic thriller, this book is not. It doesn't not come well-recommended, regardless of its inescapable comparison to The Secret History: slow progression, boring plot, flat characters, and unimpressive writing.

This is written in the first person, by the young first year student/early 30s lawyer. The college years are a flashback, and we find him today practicing commercial law, living alone, living for his career. The notion is, the 12-13 years since his first year at Oxford are a direct result of that first year.

The editor's review characterized one of the main characters, Michael, as a jock. That's just outright wrong. He did play sports, but the most important thing about him is that he is new rich, and that his self-esteem is completely about being of a better class than those around him. His sports exploits hardly enter the story. He sounds detestable, but Stourton does a good job, and I found myself accepting him for what he is, and surprised that he could be such a decent person, when the chips are down.

The center of the story is Francis, who is rich, handsome, black, and completely charismatic, in his effect on the other characters. The tone of the novel turns with his fortunes. Other than the story, the way Stourton writes the personal interactions among the main characters was a strong point, for me. I wouldn't characterize this as great literature, largely because I doubt I'd recognize great literature without someone to instruct me, but much of what he has to say about people rang true. The 5 main characters come across very distinctly, very 3-dimensional.

Plot spoiler coming - no details, but... Read at your own risk.









Well,that pretty much tells you there's a twist. Francis' fortunes turn sharply down, and it looked to me like this novel was going to be a miserable tragedy, with a hopeful beginning and a complete downer of an ending. Mostly, I'm very not into tragedies, and was prepared to be sorry I'd spent my time with this novel. Things got very interesting when I didn't expect them to, and I can't say I'm sorry I read this. So, if you're like me, and the way you feel mirrors the tone of the story and the writing, hang in there. It's not a waste of time.

For a book about night climbers, the actual night climbing is limited to a couple of chapters. Still, this coming-of-age novel has a few twists, and the milieu -- the super-rich and hangers-on at Cambridge -- is fascinating. I enjoyed it as a light read about a self-destructive man and his friends, as narrated by one of the friends. The narrator is suitably gullible but sympathetic, as he seems to berate himself constantly for his youthful mistakes. The plot gets tied up a little too neatly -- Stourton should try a little ambiguity in his next effort.

This book was on a shelf at Barnes & Noble labeled "Recommended by Staff" when it caught my eye. I was intrigued by the flap summary and purchased it. At the time, I was working on 5 other books and so this one sat for a while on my future reading pile until 3 nights ago.
I was immediately drawn in to the inner world of the narrator, who remained my favorite character throughout the book. His overwhelming desire to "get in with the right crowd" amused me greatly, since I was the kind of person who loved being in the library during college and he looked with derision on those individuals!
What I liked most about this debut novel was the level of literacy that imbued the whole book, as well as the fantastic metaphors constantly used in his descriptions. I enjoyed reading about the lavish lifestyle the main characters designed and fought to maintain, and found it ironic that in order to avoid actually DOING any college level work they had to employ a high level of intellect to their cheating schemes!
The pacing and length of the novel felt just right, and I would always finish a chapter wanting to move immediately on to the next one. I finished the book quickly, reading eagerly after work for the last several nights.
While I didn't actually LIKE Francis, Jessica, Lisa, or other peripheral people much, I very much enjoyed the book. I look forward to reading his next novel!