Title: The Mountain
My
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 1/2
"That's how it always is. In the ice, first you hear
the voice of the Beast, then you die."
Book Description:
Jeremiah Salinger blames himself.
The crash was his fault. He was the only survivor. Now only
his daughter Clara can put a smile on his face. The depression and the
nightmares are closing in.
But when he takes Clara to the Bletterbach - a canyon in the
Dolomites rich in fossil remains - he overhears by chance a conversation that
gives his life renewed focus. In 1985, three students were murdered there,
their bodies savaged, limbs severed and strewn by a killer who was never found.
Salinger, a New Yorker, is far from home, and these Italian mountains,
where his wife was born, harbour a close-knit, tight-lipped community whose
mistrust of outsiders can turn ugly. All the same, solving this mystery might
be the only thing that can keep him sane.
My musings:
A wild and dangerous place.
A gruesome 30-year old murder that has never been solved. A small town
with lots of secrets and many different allegiances. A stranger, who becomes obsessed
with solving the mystery. What more can you want from a book? D’Andrea skilfully
incorporates each of those subjects into his intriguing novel The Mountain, set
in the rugged and beautiful region of the Dolomite Mountains in Northern Italy.
I used to climb those peaks as a child with my father, so how could I resist a
book that would feature both a murder / mystery as well as armchair travel into
one of my favourite childhood places! And like our main protagonist, Jeremiah
Salinger, I was soon completely obsessed with finding out the answers to the
murder mystery, which contained that slight undercurrent of menace and hint of mystique
that added an irresistibly creepy air to the story. D’Andrea is obviously very
familiar with the setting of his book, and really brought the mountain to life
for me. Even if you have never seen those rugged peaks, the book will take you
there.
I admit that I picked up the book several times and put it
down again, because I found the lead-up to the story quite slow and
long-winded, and felt it could have done with some editing. The same goes for
some middle passages of the book, which digress into background information
that slowed the story down and was not all that relevant to me. However, once I
got to the crux of the mystery, I was completely hooked, and D’Andrea
surely packed in a few unexpected surprises!
I loved the way the author
describes the slow unravelling of the main character Salinger, whose obsession
with the old mystery soon threatens to destroy his marriage and alienate him
from his friends and family. The deeper he delves into the past, the more the
mountain seems to fight him, which makes for a wonderfully tense atmosphere. As
most characters are tight-lipped and somewhat unreliable narrators, I was never
quite sure who I could trust, and all my theories were soon debunked as the
story progressed. Personally, I loved the inclusion of the mystical element
into the story, as I have found that wild places like the Dolomites have
inspired local legends as long as there have been humans inhabiting them. D’Andrea
has achieved the perfect balance between reality and legend, always pulling the
story back to cold hard facts just at the right time, so I never once had to
suspend disbelief. Small town dynamics are astutely portrayed, forming an
invaluable part of the mystery, which added depth and credulity.
Summary:
All in all, whilst a bit bogged down with too much detail at times, The Mountain was an
utterly intriguing and compelling mystery which soon captured my interest and
kept me reading on avidly, wanting to find out what really happened on that stormy night thirty
years ago. And there were quite a few surprises in store along the way! With
its irresistible armchair travel component, this was a must-read book for me
that I would recommend to anyone looking for a multi-faceted mystery set in a
wild and unusual place.
Thank
you to Netgalley and the publisher for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
You may also enjoy:
The White Road by Sarah Lotz
Thin Air by Michelle Paver
No comments:
Post a Comment