Guardian Books to Watch 2022Evening Standard Books to Watch 2022Bookseller Editor's
ChoiceWinner of the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature 'A wonderful book -
exhilarating and taut fearless in its explorations of wildness risk motherhood and the
inner and outer worlds of the writer' Jon McGregor'This book is beautiful' Emma Jane Unsworth
'Climbing gives you the illusion of being in control just for a while the tantalising sense
of being able to stay one move ahead of death' As a child Helen Mort was drawn to the thrill
and risk of climbing the tension between human and rockface and the climber's need to be
hyperaware of the sensory world - to feel the texture of rock under their fingers how their
crampons bite into the ice the subtle shifts in weather. But when she becomes a mother for the
first time she finds herself re-examining this most elemental of disciplines and the way that
we view women who put themselves in danger. Written by one of Britain's most talented young
writers A Line Above the Sky melds memoir and nature writing to create what will surely become
a classic of the genre it asks why humans are compelled to climb and poses other deeper
questions about self motherhood and freedom. It is a love letter to losing oneself in
physicality whether that in the risk of climbing a granite wall solo without ropes or the
intensity of bringing a child into the world.
