Why don’t we live when we know we’re here just this one time, just one single, unrepeatable time in this unutterably magnificent world ? This outcry against the emptiness of ordinary everyday life uttered by the hero of Max Frisch’s novella is countered by ‘an answer from the silence’ of the mountains. When the novella begins, the protagonist has just turned thirty and is engaged to be married and about to start work as a teacher. Frightened by the idea of settling down, he journeys to the Alps in a do-or-die effort to climb the unclimbed North Ridge, and by doing so, prove he is not ordinary. Reaching the top, he returns not in triumph but in frostbitten shock, having come dangerously close to death. ‘When the climber sets out alone towards the deathly North Ridge, his quest does feel like it will answer something. What has already been answered, long before we learn the climber’s fate, is the value of stepping out of our tracks, every once in a while, and asking questions of the sky.’ Janet Potter, Bookslut