Up to the Light
A Novel
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Up to the Light
Pre-order Now for €17.88
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Narrated by:
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Greg Lockett
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Kit Griffiths
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By:
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Julia Armfield
"MAGNIFICENT...I could not stop reading it. I loved it.” —Charlotte McConaghy, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING author of Wild Dark Shore
“Armfield is an ERA-DEFINING writer.” —Kaliane Bradley, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING author of The Ministry of Time
“Armfield writes the kind of books that STICK WITH YOU FOR LIFE.” —Kristen Arnett, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING author of With Teeth
From Lambda Literary Award and Goodreads Choice finalist Julia Armfield, a novel following two climbers in the aftermath of an Alpine expedition that goes horribly wrong, pitched as Into Thin Air meets The Haunting of Hill House, by way of Brokeback Mountain
June, 1994. The storied Mount Varda has been untouched by mountaineers for decades: the last expedition ended in tragedy. When Liam Holness and Petal Coulson-Carter, best friends and celebrated climbers, are invited to join a team organized by the famous Jim Callaghan to pioneer a new route, they are initially skeptical. Working-class Liam and butch lesbian Petal exist on the outside of mountaineering’s privilege, and they have no interest in Jim’s media circus.
But the call of the mountain is too strong, and soon Liam and Petal are in the French Alps preparing for ascent. Joining them on the expedition is Bill Franklin, Liam’s oldest rival, whose sweet nature begins to break down Liam’s defenses, while Petal’s heart is turned by a climber’s widow living in the town. As the expedition looms closer, the climbers begin to experience sleepless nights, bad dreams, and hallucinations. And as they make their way up the mountain, the world gives way to something stranger. With oxygen scarce and the altitude dizzying, how can Liam and Petal be sure of what is real? And will they ever know what happened to those they leave behind on the peak?
Braiding Liam and Petal’s perspectives with Jim’s tell-all memoir in the expedition's aftermath, Up to the Light is a heart-pounding adventure story and an aching dual love story, with a horror edge. Gorgeously written, chilling, and entrancing, this novel asks why we are drawn to danger, and how we can find one another again in the wake of unspeakable loss.
Critics' reviews
"This book! Wow. It is so smart and so utterly compulsive, it grabbed me and didn’t let go, it dragged me all the way up to its almost unbearably tense, magnificent climax. I could not stop reading it. I loved it."
—Charlotte McConaghy, New York Times bestselling author of Wild Dark Shore
“A mesmerizing novel—I felt the unearthly pull of its power long after I’d finished. Up to the Light is filled with an almost unbearably seductive sense of unease; otherworldly horror meshes with the sensuous agony of suppressed desire, with the dark dictatorship of family values, and with the aching truth that we so often struggle to accept that someone else is trying to love us. A miracle of a book.”
—Kaliane Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of The Ministry of Time
“As beautiful as it is horrifying, Up to the Light captures, with stunning precision, the often illogical, sometimes cursed nature of desire in its most dangerous forms. Written in Armfield's supremely stylish prose and with a deep love for the flawed and the human, this novel shows a generational talent stepping fully into her prime.”
—Heather Parry, author of Orpheus Builds a Girl
“Up to the Light is an unforgettable wrenching epic about mountains and the people who climb them and the very nature of striving. Armfield is an extraordinary storytelling talent, one I would follow up any cold mountain.”
—Sarvat Hasin, author of Strange Girls
“In prose that dazzles and delights, with characters that will dig into you as they yearn and blunder and climb, Up to the Light is an epic novel that never neglects intimacy even as it reaches for astounding heights. Intelligent, unsettling, ambitious: another brilliant novel from a brilliant writer.”
—John Patrick McHugh, author of Fun and Games
“Sublime in all senses of the word: at once a relentlessly propulsive adventure and an exquisitely tender love story, a meditation on queer friendship and an exploration of our vexed relationship with nature. Up to the Light is as expansive and terrifying as love itself.”
—Avery Curran, author of Spoiled Milk
“Thrilling and tender in equal measure, with Armfield’s signature precision prose, Up to the Light cements her as one of Britain’s best contemporary novelists.”
—Eliza Clark, author of Boy Parts