Climbers

Our destination Y in our alphabetical reading around the world leads us to Yorkshire in the UK.

Retreating from the ruins of his marriage, Mike leaves London for the wildness of the Yorkshire moors, where he falls in with a group of climbers – a band of misfits and mavericks bound by the pursuit of the unattainable: the perfect climb. Travelling from abandoned urban quarries to misty, lichened crags, Mike discovers an intensity of experience – a wash of pain, fear and excitement – that causes the rest of his world to recede. Increasingly addicted to the adrenaline, folklore and camaraderie of the sport, he begins to lose his grip on the line between passion and obsession – at a cost.

Described in The Sunday Times as “a vivid, restless, deeply cunning novel”, the book attracted the following review by writer Benjamin Myers: “More than anything I’ve ever read, Climbers truly gets to the heart of that strange, indefinable otherness of the wild northern landscape, and the odd people compelled to conquer it in their own odd ways. It feels more than book – it’s an adrenalized dream, a series of moods as changeable as the sky above. Unique is the only word for it.”

We are very much looking forward to diving into this novel together and are pleased to have selected it for our Book of the Month for July 2024. Please share the read with us. The book is available to reserve from our bookshop HERE.

If you wish to attend the session to discuss the book with us and other readers, please contact our bookshop to make sure of reserving a place. Our sessions tend to reach full attendance capacity, so booking in beforehand is essential.