Vodka at Versailles

Yet another book about the jeunesse doree in academia. This time it is Cambridge, not Oxford, although Stourton overtly acknowledges Evelyn Waugh once by name and by inference throughout the novel. Francis is Sebastian Flyte without a soul, and James is Charles Ryder without redemption. It uses the Brideshead trope of the outsider desiring entry into what he imagines is a secret club of fascinating people. But unlike Charles (and Julia Flyte), no one attains wisdom. Hell, no one attains anything at all. And I hate to say it, because I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did, "no one" includes the reader. There is no resolution. The Night Climbers simply meanders to a close with a deus ex machina that works as well as that literary device ever does.

The other author to whom The Night Climbers owes at least partial royalties is Donna Tartt. Her The Secret History is a masterpiece of this genre and I would argue, a spectacular literary achievement period. Tartt's book also deals with an outsider seeking to crack into a charmed circle of undergraduates. But she is careful to create the world that brings them together, i.e. classical studies, and peels it back like an onion for half her novel before Richard Papen, her "James", fully understands what actually binds his classmates together.

Stourton simply dumps the night climbing thing in James' lap, and while there is one chapter that skims over it as something these people do, it then disappears as a plot point. Other than that, and as I say, that isn't much, there is nothing at all that binds the group. As a result the characters appear paper thin. Two of the circle are mere blips, so unimportant that Stourton kills one off stage with no more resonance than I just had in this sentence.

The plot MacGuffin is preposterous both in concept and mechanical execution. As in, I didn't believe in it at all, and I will hazard the guess nor does Stourton. That too is disposed of so casually that the reader gets no payoff at all. The shared guilt of The Secret History's characters ruins lives. Here James and Jessica shrug and get on with it. What exactly they "get on with" is never made clear.

There are some very good passages. Stourton can write. The decadence frequently comes across as studied, but he clearly knows Cambridge and The Night Climbers is well enough grounded in place. But the glittering backdrop cannot ultimately distract from the absence of anything in front of it.

Not recommended.