Product Description

When James Walker first arrives at Tudor College, Cambridge, he is anxious to find his place among new friends. By accident, he encounters one of the members of a club calling itself the Tudor Night Climbers, a tightly knit, wealthy, secretive and tantalizingly eccentric circle of undergraduates who at night scale the college towers and gargoyles in pursuit of ever greater sensations. Seduced by their talent for decadence and high living, James falls for the reckless charisma of both Francis, the group s ringleader and Jessica, his beautiful best friend. Jessica becomes his obsession, and also his arch rival for Francis s friendship.

The group s tear-away extravagance is funded, unwittingly, by Francis s father, Lord Soulford, but when suddenly he cuts his son off, the friends are left floundering, until Francis embroils them all in a plan that will test not only their friendship, but also their very souls. The story begins with the news that, almost ten years after the crime, the fake Picasso they replaced the real one with is in danger of being discovered. The beautiful Jessica visits the narrator/lawyer James at his office in order to see what trouble they might be in, and the story flashes back and forth in time, also following the present narrative as they figure out whether they can save themselves.

Humming with intellectual energy and grace, The Night Climbers portrays people at their most impressionable, when the intensity of early relationships stand to define their lives forever. Seductive and sinister, THE NIGHT CLIMBERS is an exciting debut by a talented young writer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1327796 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781416588412
• Condition: USED - LIKE NEW
• Notes:
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From Publishers Weekly
British author Stourton's ambitious debut paints a complex, if often predictable, portrait of collegiate hedonism and friends bound by a terrible secret. As an awkward first-year at Cambridge's Tudor College, James fears he'll never join the ranks of his privileged classmates. But when a chance encounter introduces him to a close-knit group of friends devoted to scaling the college's buildings in the dead of night, James finds himself drawn into a world of excess and adventure. Francis, the group's charismatic leader, is adored by the beautiful but aloof Jessica, on whom James harbors a secret crush. The group is rounded out by Lisa, with her eye for shady business deals, and Michael, the blustery jock. After Francis's father, Lord Soulford, cuts off his son's monthly allowance, the friends hatch a plan to maintain their lavish lifestyle that will have disastrous consequences for years to come. With undeniable echoes of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, the novel juggles too many story lines to sustain the suspense needed for such a complicated tale. Still, Stourton is a name to watch. (Sept.)
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Review
"An amazingly accomplished debut....The writing is elegant, the story decadent." -- Observer

"Loved The Line of Beauty, mooned over Brideshead, lapped up The Secret History? Then this one's for you.... Stourton really can write." -- Independent on Sunday

About the Author
Ivo Stourton was born in 1982 and received high honors (a double

first) in English at Cambridge. He is currently training to be a city

lawyer.

Customer Reviews

Worth climing with them....
Ivo Stourton's night climbers are young, Cambridge University students. "Climbing" has all the right associations in this novel: the characters actually ascend Campus buildings to dizzying heights; they are climing to isolate themselves by surmounting the rest of us. This is social climbing, cult-driven climbing and ultimately climbing to grasp a sort of awareness about choice and the need to chose well. There are significant pages devoted to art in general, and whether the price really does define the product, and these are well-worth pondering.

At a more general leve, the idea of night climbing calls to mind the Platonic dialogue involving epistemology; specifically, the problem of knowing how and what you know as you climb throught a mist of fog that precludes visual clarity and limits the certainty about what is or can be known. The night can bring the city into sharp clarity for the climbers, and it can just as easily create instances where they are duped. The night climbers are, throughout this simply remarkably well-written work, wrestling with what they think they understand.... Read this book and let the games begin.....!

entertaining but trite
This book held my interest and was entertaining (maybe partly because I attented Cambridge University for a semester and therefore recognized some of the references), but often felt melodramatic and predictable. The story focused on the lives and relationships of four friends and a secret they shared. However, considering that this book read like character study, the development of personalities and relationships could have been more complex. I would read more by this author as he definitely is an elegant writer.

A sharp look at upper-class college life
This elegantly written novel is all about the tragic sacrifice of devotion and the ensuring complications of a friendship that sets in motion of a series of events which finally roll to a halt a decade later in the snowy streets of suburban London and Cambridge. Central to the story is that of the wealthy lawyer James Walker and his reflections of his life at the prestigious Oxbridge college in Cambridge.

Raised in the school of hard knocks and coming from a rather poor social vantage point, James is a trifle awed at having the opportunity to attend such a prestigious school. Cut off almost completely from his peers and not really knowing whom to approach, James welcomes the arrival of Michael Findlay, who erupts into his life along with his group of glamorous, rich friends called the Tudor Night Climbers, who get their kicks out of climbing onto rooftops and leading a pleasure-seeking lifestyle.

The head of the group is the seductive and hedonistic Francis Manley who entices the impressionable James with his tales of his life in Zimbabwe and his aristocratic pretensions, particularly that of his father Lord Soulford who is currently trying for nomination as the local Conservative candidate. Soon enough, life for James has taken on the seductive glow of possibility and the promise of fulfillment, with Francis his only link to the shadowy and glamorous world of fox hunting afternoons, clandestine boxing matches, and drug-fuelled parties.

To James, Francis is "a fighter," the embodiment of all that James wishes he could be, and someone who has been raised all his life in the midst of a fortune the likes of which James had only encountered in books and glossy magazines. As his friendship with Francis develops, James becomes ever more carried away with the joy of total superiority, while also falling under the spell of the beautiful Jessica Katz who becomes his partner in crime and also a type of co-protector for the reckless Francis.

As James falls under this group's spell, the spires and turrets of Oxbridge College provide a glamorous backdrop to all of the unfolding events. It is here on the roof of Tudor Court, with Cambridge bathed in a watery winter sunshine and everything appearing in extraordinary detail, that James sees Francis for who he really is: a conflicted young man who makes you want to suspend disbelief so you can drink more of his magic while also fooling you with his financial and romantic intrigues.

Francis earns most of his money from his fighting, but he spends it and he's always in trouble with the bookies, and a whole host of creditors. With his father threatening to cut off his inheritance, and rather than drag his friends through the depression and despair of having no more money, Francis hatches a scheme to forge a Picasso currently owned by Oxbridge College. James, Jessica, and Lisa, the fourth member of the group, conspire to help their hero pursue his outlandish scheme, even as they risk becoming embroiled in theft, tax evasion, and the inevitable intimations of blackmail.

As James looks back on all of these events, he releases both memory and a longing to probe once more into the volatile passions that once surged beneath Francis's façade. When Francis's true nature begins to protrude, a hard seam of self-destruction starts to assert itself that endures long after the excitement and zest through which it had run has worn away.

Author Ivo Stourton writes passionately about the bonds of friendship and the price of being misunderstood. Much of Francis's later life is shaped by the vulnerable impressions that he once formed of his best friend, and in the end even Jessica realizes that she's invested too much of herself in the risky enterprise of Francis. Both are more than willing to hold up a spiritual candle and a type of allegorical shrine to Francis's long-suffering existence.

Obviously your enjoyment of this novel will depend on how interested you are in experiencing the trials a group of the risk-dependent college kids and the feelings of a vulnerable young man who tries to live vicariously through them even when he's in danger of collapsing into a quagmire of moral certainty. Although Stourton's characters are mostly self-absorbed and habitually unsympathetic, and not that particularly likable, there's still much entertainment to be had in the author's inventive storyline and also his willingness to portray the seamier and more decadent side of upper-class college life. Mike Leonard October 07.