One Step in the Clouds: The Sierra Club Omnibus of Mountaineering Fiction [Hardcover]

Audrey Salkeld (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This collection of 31 short stories, one play, four novels and two novellas--all thematically dedicated to mountaineering-- is highly diverse: adventure, folklore, science fiction and crime fiction all are represented. And there are some ripping yarns. For example, the working-class English heroine in Elizabeth Coxhead's melodramatic novel One Green Bottle attains great heights as a climber and as a person, then falls, metaphorically, in an infuriating conclusion. Rand, the elite climber in James Salter's excellent Solo Faces , provides a chilling, near-paradigmatic model of a superstar. In David Harris's Vortex , innocent lovers become drug runners by circumstance, and violent by necessity; the story has "major motion picture" written all over it. It's regrettable, though, that the plots of most of the fiction override and trivialize the sport, and that nowhere in this hefty volume is there an adequate explanation of what drives men to climb mountains. "That we have survived again is the only victory," declares the hero of Roger Ubank's North Wall . "There is nothing else." It would seem that machismo lies at the core of mountaineering--not an interesting or penetrating inference. 75,000 first printing.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1056 pages
• Publisher: Random House, Inc.; First Edition edition (March 13, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871566389
• ISBN-13: 978-0871566386
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,666,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars includes the best climbing novel ever written, January 2, 2005

By 

Mike Garrison (Covington, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Step in the Clouds: The Sierra Club Omnibus of Mountaineering Fiction (Hardcover)

Climbing just doesn't seem to produce much good fiction. I don't know why. There are some great non-fiction climbing authors, but the good fiction is sparse and the excellent fiction is almost non-existent.

Without a doubt, the best novel ever written about climbing is Elizabeth Coxhead's "One Green Bottle", and it can be found in this collection. Coxhead's novel follows a young woman from England's lower class who accidentally gets involved in climbing and finds not only an escape from a life of drudgery but also romance and adventure. I don't know if a non-climber would understand how perfectly Coxhead captures the climbing sub-culture, but even a non-climber should be able to love this story. Many people over the years, though, have found themselves shocked and saddened by the ending. Read it for yourself and see what you think.

Another decent novel in here is "The Vortex", a drug smuggling and climbing thriller which is what the movie "Cliffhanger" SHOULD have been like. (Cliffhanger has no connection with The Vortex.)

This book also includes Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mother Goddess Of The World", with the same characters who are in "Escape From Kathmandu".

It's been a while since I read this book, but those are the stories I remember well from it. It also includes many others, mostly short stories.