The 'sahibs' express the same gung-ho 'let's beat the Hun' values and there's the same dated, dismissive attitude towards the 'coolies' and their 'backward superstitions'. There's a sense of male bonhomie and rivalry, typical of that sort of Edwardian and inter-war fiction. Indeed, the first part of the book has the feel of a vintage 'Boys' Own' issue, or a long-lost Conan Doyle novel. Accordingly, the dangers portrayed in the initial chapters are physical rather than otherwordly. and tragedies: the Kangchenjunga remains, to date, one of the deadliest peaks for mountaineers. Indeed, memories and relics of the Lyell expedition seem to cast a pall over the new climb.īoth the 1907 and the 1935 expeditions described in Paver's book are fictional - but the context is well researched, and the novel contains several references to real life attempts. It turns out, however, that Lyell's memoirs might have left out some of the more unsavoury details of that doomed attempt, as our intrepid protagonists will discover to their dismay. A team of five Englishmen, including narrator Stephen Pearce and his brother 'Kits', set off in the footsteps of a disastrous 1907 expedition, made famous through the memoirs of its leader Edmund Lyell. The context of 'Thin Air' is a 1935 expedition to the summit of the Kangchenjunga in the Himalayas, the third highest peak in the world.

In this regard, Michelle Paver's 'Thin Air' - much like its predecessor - is not your typical ghostly tale since it is the very remoteness of the haunted spaces which makes the setting particularly eerie. So used are we to the traditions of the genre that a description of a decrepit mansion full of dark corners and unexplained creaks is enough to raise in us readers expectations of phantoms and ghouls. Ghosts - or fictional ones, at least - tend to haunt inhabited places, whether houses, churches, castles or hospital wards.

Thin air by michelle paver