Jeffery Archer's Paths of Glory
“Why do you want to climb Mount Everest” ?
- Because it’s there !!
History is known to record extraordinary events which happened this day that year. How often does it happen that something extraordinary gets overwritten by something more extraordinary? Answer is quite a many times, whenever the past failure is over ridden by someone’s success, we forget the one who came second. No one really remembers the one who came second, to add to it specially when they are unsuccessful BUT how do we call them unsuccessful? Simply because of the fact that there was nothing/no one to record if they were successful or not.
Paths of Glory is very unlike a Jeffery Archer book. First area of distinction is that although fiction, it acts as a biography of one of the failed mission to conquer Mount Everest.
The story beings in 1999, when a climbing party to Mount Everest found a frozen dead body which is confirmed to be George Mallory’s but with missing photograph of his wife, the meaning of which is realized in the last few pages.
After it the story chronologically follows George’s life. It’s an out and out Jeffery Archer’s book following George’s childhood exhibiting his natural instinct to be a climber, his college days which proves his ideology were indeed of the path not travelled by others, his first love, marriage, World War, kids all woven perfectly with his desire and dream of conquering mountains. “Paths of Glory” is what a man makes when he knows about his dreams and has the desire to fulfill them, it is not the path less traveled, it is the path a man travels day in and out in his mind, in his dreams because it is where his destiny awaits him. Makes me say, “Believe in dreams that you see, when your heart sleeps” !
This is a Jeff’s book when he sits to describe George’s life but missing his usual twists and turns writing style. It’s after the book is finished that we realize that all missing twist and turns is actually saved for the very last, which makes us question the present names in history and IF true, will ask history to be rewritten.
From the very beginning of book and because we know that Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Sherapa are the first climbers of Mt Everest, it’s clear that George is not going to be successful. This makes us know the ending before we even start off the book, yet it’s the beauty of Jeff’s writing which makes us turn pages after another and keeps us glued until the last.
The book definitely is a good read, not just to know about George Mallory but the fact that it points out that how we tend to forget the less fortunate men because someone else had been luckier.
My salutes to all those unknown heroes, who are long lost in History.
Rating: 3.5/5
Comments