"Crux is a term that rock climbers know well. It's the most challenging section of a route - the place where, quote, "everything inside yourself told you to wait, to stall, to cling to safety, and yet where, if you wanted to live, you had to take the risk." That is how author Gabriel Tallent describes it in his new novel called "Crux.""
"I love that climbing can have this inch-by-inch terror. And it just takes you to spectacular settings that you would never reach in your ordinary life, with just wild people. So you're on the journey with someone else, and it's cooperative. You're working together, which is something that I have always loved about this sport. It tends to open people up a little bit. Like, I have had some of my wildest and most confessional moments, like, sitting on ledges with friends."
"Dan is a little bit, like, a disaffected golden child. He's tall, handsome, good at school, well-liked by his teachers, and it's believed that he's going to go on to have a promising future at college. But it's not something that he wants. He's sort of living through the onset of major mental illness, through depression. And every night he goes out and climbs with his best friend Tamma, who is this sort of mouthy burnout."
Crux refers to the most challenging section of a climbing route where safety and fear collide with the necessity to take a risk. Climbing offers inch-by-inch terror and access to spectacular, otherwise unreachable settings, fostering cooperative bonds and confessional intimacy. The narrative opens high on a ledge between two 17-year-old friends, Tamma and Dan, who climb together nightly. Dan appears poised for academic success but is coping with the onset of major mental illness and depression. Tamma is provocative, equally intelligent in nonacademic ways, and comes from a more working-class background. The relationship centers on shared risk, loyalty, and escape.
Read at www.npr.org
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