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Title: Fragile Edge: A Personal Portrait of Loss on Everest by Maria Coffey, Chris Bonington ISBN: 0898867371 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75
Rating: 5
Summary: Lost Love
Comment: Lost Love
Fragile Edge: A Personal Portrait of Loss on Everest
Reviewed by Laura Drury
One rainy day, I curled up on the couch with a steaming cup of coffee and Maria Coffey's book, Fragile Edge, intending to spend a couple of pleasurable hours reading. As it happened, I did not stop after a couple of hours. I read the whole book that day.
From the beginning I knew that Joe Tasker, her lover and well-known British mountain-climber, had died in a climbing accident on Everest and that this had affected her deeply. Even though I knew the end of the story, Maria's conversational style of storytelling kept me glued to my seat. It was as if she were sitting in my living room, telling me all the details of her lost love.
Even so, Coffey's book is not a tragedy. It's a vicarious peek into a life of thrilling uneasiness, alternating with periods of intense passion. It is the story of how one woman coped with the strain of "the unseen menace, dormant but stirring." Maria described herself as "a climber's girlfriend, left at home, watching for mail". The many farewells were difficult for her. "There was always that wrenching in the gut when he walked away and three months of uncertainty stretched ahead like a tunnel with no light at the end." But when he returned from his dangerous expeditions, remembers Coffey, "there would be a resurgence of feeling between us, an excitement as fresh and keen as when we were first together".
This is also the story of Maria Coffey's and Hilary Rhodes' (Boardman's wife) month long trip to the advance base camp of their loved ones' last climb. They did it to find closure and say goodbye as they left mementos at a memorial cairn that had been erected for the two lost climbers. They planted a little garden of edelweiss and mosses. They mourned and grieved, then laughed and sang with their Chinese hosts. They came to terms with their loss and made peace with Everest. They decided that regretting was of no use.
Fragile Edge gives the average person insight into the world of serious mountaineering. "I was in love with a man who courted death, whose life made more sense to him if he pushed its limits," observed Coffey. In Joe Tasker's own words, "I sometimes wonder why I can't be content with Sunday rock climbs." The fatality rate among high-altitude mountaineers is supposedly one in ten. It is a world that most of us observe from the safety of our less-than-dangerous lives.
Rating: 4
Summary: THE LONG GOODBYE...
Comment: What happens to the loved ones of mountaineers who perish while seeking to climb higher peaks or pioneer new routes on challenging mountains? The author attempts to answer this question with her well written and deeply personal account.
The author was intimately involved in the mountaineering world of the nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties. At the time she was in the throes of an intense love affair with Joe Trasker, the British climber who perished in 1982 with his regular climbing partner, Peter Boardman, while attempting to climb the then unclimbed Northeast ridge of Everest.
The author offers an intriguing, birdseye view into the tight circle of the mountaineering elite through her relationship with Joe Trasker. The book, however, is not about climbing, per se. It is more of a personal catharsis of her relationship with Joe Trasker.
Still, this makes for an interesting read. The book is divided into two parts. The first concerns itself with the Joe that was living. The second part concerns itself with the Joe that had perished.
The first part chronicles their relationship, which was intense. It also seemed to be a little one sided. The author makes it fairly clear to the reader that Joe Trasker did not seem to have the same commitment to the relationship that the author seems to have had. Her reluctance to let the relationship go appears to have been based more upon what the relationship could have been, rather than upon what it actually was. As they say, love is blind.
The second part of the book chronicles her coming to terms with his death. She does this by joining up with Peter Boardman's widow, Hilary, and setting off on a journey to Tibet and, ultimately, to Everest in an attempt to connect to Joe one final time, as well as to seek closure to a part of her life that was no more.
Sensitively written and finely drawn, her pain is palpable and her story moving. It is, above all, a fitting tribute to Joe Trasker, the man who inspired such devotion.
Rating: 5
Summary: A book for the "other half"
Comment: The most rewarding aspect in reading this book was the insight into what it is like to bethe partner of someone with such a single minded focus that it surpasses everything. I am that person, and it made me think twice!
It doesn't matter which one reads it first as long as you both read it!
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Title: Nanda Devi: The Tragic Expedition by John Roskelley ISBN: 0898867398 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Boardman Tasker Omnibus: Savage Arena, the Shining Mountain, Sacred Summits, Everest the Cruel Way by Peter Boardman, Joe Tasker ISBN: 0898864364 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: May, 1995 List Price(USD): $38.00 |
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Title: The Last Step: The American Ascent of K2 by Rick Ridgeway ISBN: 0898866324 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: July, 1999 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Fatal Mountaineer: The High-Altitude Life and Death of Willi Unsoeld, American Himalayan Legend by Robert Roper ISBN: 0312261535 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: March, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Thin Air: Encounters in the Himalayas by Greg Child, Doug Scott ISBN: 0898865883 Publisher: Mountaineers Books Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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