Deathful Ridge: A Novel of Everest

In 1924, British mountain climber George Mallory disappeared with his companion, Andrew Irvine, near the summit of Mt. Everest. The premise of this surprisingly tedious speculative novel is that, while Irvine died--under not entirely innocent circumstances--Mallory was rescued and lived out the rest of his life in hiding and disgrace, under the protection of his friends. Considering that Mallory's friends included the likes of Rupert Brooke, Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey, the idea is wonderful. Unfortunately, the three tellers of the tale--an elderly former rival of Mallory's named Nye Davies; an unnamed first-person narrator; and Mallory himself, through selected diary entries--manage to drain most of the drama out of this very dramatic story, although the final dream sequence, in which the narrator ""converses"" with Mallory's spirit, makes for a fascinating and effective conclusion. Wainwright has a strong, literate voice, which lends authenticity to his material, but his failure to maintain the momentum of the action on the mountain itself sometimes turns the novel into its own long, slow climb. (Sept.)