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ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- A woman is visiting Switzerland after the death of her beloved father, who was born there but migrated to Australia many years ago. She had always hoped to travel with him in the land of his birth, and this trip is a journey of deep sadness and loss of what-could-have-been. But it is interleaved with her meditations on artists and writers who have lived and worked on the shores of Lac Leman (Geneva) and of mountain climbers from the past and their links to the worlds her mind inhabits. Her particular interest is of a reclusive artist who painted train station waiting rooms, but her musings move from the 18th century through to now. With a copy of the 1891 Baedeker's Guide, her interest in the literary world and artistic circles keeps her company, as she also navigates the grief of losing her father...
A quiet novel full of depth and profound beauty, one that asks you to pause over its fine sentences and the resonating connections of a reader to art, whenever or whyever it was created. Lindy
Claire Thomas is a writer from Naarm/Melbourne. Her first novel was Fugitive Blue, which won the Dobbie Literary Award for women writers, and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Her second novel, The Performance, also longlisted for the Miles Franklin, was internationally published to critical acclaim, and shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in 2022. Claire holds a PhD from the University of Melbourne and has worked as a mentor, lecturer, supervisor and teacher for many years. On Not Climbing Mountains was written with the support of residency at the Fondation Jan Michalski in Montricher, Switzerland.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- A woman is visiting Switzerland after the death of her beloved father, who was born there but migrated to Australia many years ago. She had always hoped to travel with him in the land of his birth, and this trip is a journey of deep sadness and loss of what-could-have-been. But it is interleaved with her meditations on artists and writers who have lived and worked on the shores of Lac Leman (Geneva) and of mountain climbers from the past and their links to the worlds her mind inhabits. Her particular interest is of a reclusive artist who painted train station waiting rooms, but her musings move from the 18th century through to now. With a copy of the 1891 Baedeker's Guide, her interest in the literary world and artistic circles keeps her company, as she also navigates the grief of losing her father...
A quiet novel full of depth and profound beauty, one that asks you to pause over its fine sentences and the resonating connections of a reader to art, whenever or whyever it was created. Lindy
