Over the Edge

April 8, 2002
Child has everything he needs for an Ian Fleming–type mountaineering drama: a great setting in the Pamir Alai region of Kyrgyzstan; a cast of quick-witted American mountaineers (three men and one woman); a backdrop of drug trafficking, political instability and economic free-for-all; Islamic mujahideen facing Uzbeki soldiers armed with naïveté or Kalashnikovs, or both. Unfortunately, Child (Postcards from the Ledge) left his talent for dialogue, description and sense of timing back at the magazine writer's base camp at 4,000 words. The climbers were kidnapped and held for six days in August 2000, pawns of Muslim extremists on the border between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Despite full access to the climbers after their escape and rescue, and despite background knowledge from his own climbs in the region, Child's story is flat. The dialogue is wooden, and Child tends to overexplain his characters' motivations and psychic states. Though he details some thrilling scenes, the psychological drama fizzles, and the momentum is slowed by Child's narrative about his own connection to the story (which began as an assignment for Climbing
magazine). Even the obvious current relevance of kidnapping, Islamic politics and narco-trafficking in these mountains doesn't quite compensate for storytelling problems—and being just one more John Krakauer–style mountaineering adventure doesn't help, either.