PRAISE FOR A CHANGE IN ALTITUDE: Valerie Sayers , Washington Post A Change in Altitude reflects many of Shreve's familiar themes: loss and grief, the relationship between a man and woman, and how one moment can change a life forever. Shreve weaves a strong mix of exotic Africa and interesting characters, producing a potent story that will keep readers thinking about them long after the last page of the novel."—Mary Foster , Newsday A Change in Altitude rises a few thousand feet above typical women's fiction."—Olivia Barker , USA Today Eliza Borné , Bookpage A Change in Altitude is an unusual kind of page-turner, part whodunit, part adventure story....Readers will vicariously enjoy all facets of this adventure in Africa from the safety of their own armchair."—Diane Makovsky , Free-Lance Star
Awinner. Once again, Shreve's fans can approach her book with the confident anticipation that she will provide yet another satisfying experience. A Change in Altitude is an unusual kind of page-turner, part whodunit, part adventure story....Readers will vicariously enjoy all facets of this adventure in Africa from the safety of their own armchair.Free-Lance Star
Prepare to cancel all your appointments as you race through this dramatic saga....Enthralling. The mountains Margaret must climb-literally, and figuratively-are difficult ones. Readers will be eager to learn if she successfully scales the peak.Bookpage
Shreve takes readers from Nairobi's lush suburbs to its fetid slums, from the drawing-room world of the white gentry to that of its black servants....A Change in Altitude rises a few thousand feet above typical women's fiction.USA Today
No one is better at gently, but thoroughly probing the interior life of her characters than Anita Shreve....A Change in Altitude reflects many of Shreve's familiar themes: loss and grief, the relationship between a man and woman, and how one moment can change a life forever. Shreve weaves a strong mix of exotic Africa and interesting characters, producing a potent story that will keep readers thinking about them long after the last page of the novel.Newsday
"Awinner. Once again, Shreve's fans can approach her book with the confident anticipation that she will provide yet another satisfying experience. A Change in Altitude is an unusual kind of page-turner, part whodunit, part adventure story....Readers will vicariously enjoy all facets of this adventure in Africa from the safety of their own armchair."
Diane Makovsky - Free-Lance Star
"Prepare to cancel all your appointments as you race through this dramatic saga....Enthralling. The mountains Margaret must climb-literally, and figuratively-are difficult ones. Readers will be eager to learn if she successfully scales the peak."
"Shreve takes readers from Nairobi's lush suburbs to its fetid slums, from the drawing-room world of the white gentry to that of its black servants....A Change in Altitude rises a few thousand feet above typical women's fiction."
Olivia Barker - USA Today
"No one is better at gently, but thoroughly probing the interior life of her characters than Anita Shreve....A Change in Altitude reflects many of Shreve's familiar themes: loss and grief, the relationship between a man and woman, and how one moment can change a life forever. Shreve weaves a strong mix of exotic Africa and interesting characters, producing a potent story that will keep readers thinking about them long after the last page of the novel."
PRAISE FOR A CHANGE IN ALTITUDE:
"Visual and sharply focused....Shreve knows how to keep a reader engaged."
Valerie Sayers - Washington Post
For many Americans, a one-year stay in Kenya would be an exotic adventure, a vicarious immersion in a vastly different multicultural place. For newlyweds Geraldine and James, it becomes something quite different. A terrifying accident on a climbing expedition on Mount Kenya changes everything, forcing 28-year-old Geraldine to reassess both her marriage and herself. Another probing domestic story by the author of the Oprah's Book Club selection The Pilot's Wife .
Anita Shreve's salad years as a journalist for a Nairobi magazine lend a roiling authenticity to this tale of loss and disillusionment, set in Kenya in the late 1970s amid the paranoid declining months of Jomo Kenyatta's presidency…Shreve displays a keen radar for the insidious hierarchies of power and the cross-cultural ubiquity of the alpha male.
Shreve (Testimony), who worked in Kenya as a journalist early in her career, returns to that country in her slow latest, the story of a photojournalist and her doctor husband, whose temporary relocation abroad goes sour. The year-long research trip is an opportunity for Patrick, but leaves Margaret floundering in colonialist culture shock, feeling like “an actor in a play someone British had written for a previous generation.” When a climbing trip to Mt. Kenya goes fatally wrong, Margaret's role in the tragedy drives a quiet wedge between the couple. Compounding those stressors are multiple robberies and adulterous temptations, as well as Margaret's freelance work for a “controversial” newspaper. Written in a strangely emotionless third person, the novel is stuffed with travelogues and vignettes of privileged expatriate life, including the chestnut of Margaret feeling very guilty about being given a rug she admires. While some of these moments aren't bad, the scant dramatic tension and direct-to-video plot make this a slog. (Sept.)
Margaret and Patrick are 28-year-old Bostonians living in Kenya in 1977. He's a doctor researching tropical diseases, while she dabbles in photography. They live in the guest house of Brits Arthur and Diana. An impulsive plan to climb to the top of Mount Kenya elicits varied responses from the group, which eventually will include a Swiss couple as well. While most see a challenge, if a mild one, Margaret is terrified, scrambling for a way to back out. Ultimately, tragedy strikes, and everyone, including Patrick, looks to Margaret as its cause. The country's race relations contribute to Margaret's feelings of remorse, pushing her to find a job and perhaps a new love. VERDICT The usual pinpoint precision of Shreve's (Testimony) prose is not in evidence here, as readers must work to discover the novel's time frame, and accusations of Margaret's complicity in the accident seem out of proportion, as does her sense of guilt. People who might consider an excursion to Mount Kenya will undoubtedly cancel their airfare and buy a new armchair instead. Shreve fans will demand this one, though. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/09; online reading group guide.]—Bette-Lee Fox, Library Journal
Shreve (Testimony, 2008, etc.) sends a young American couple up Mt. Kenya, with disastrous consequences for their marriage. Margaret and Patrick have been in Nairobi for three months. He came to pursue research in tropical diseases while offering his services as a doctor in free clinics; she was bored with her job at a Boston alternative weekly and hopes to find more interesting photography opportunities in Africa. Neither is an experienced climber, nor do they especially like their landlords, Arthur and Diana, who suggest the expedition. But they go along anyway, and it's athletic Diana who falls to her death. Is Margaret to blame because Diana was exasperated by her slowness and enraged by Arthur's attentions to the younger woman? Patrick thinks so and says so to his wife; their relationship is on shaky ground for the remainder of the story. It's not clear precisely what Shreve intends to convey in her tale. She unsparingly depicts the poverty and corruption of late-1970s Kenya and sends Margaret to work at a reforming newspaper whose editor is eventually arrested, but politics are not a central concern. Margaret, the point-of-view character, is a sensitive and thoughtful observer who can't seem to take hold of her life. Patrick will strike most readers as cold and judgmental from the start; it's hard to understand what Margaret ever saw in him, and her attraction to a reporter at the Kenya Morning Tribune isn't much more compelling. The second climb up Mt. Kenya, taken a year after the first, does not in the least meet Patrick's goal of expunging the "deadly silence" and "devastating mistrust" that have enveloped the couple, but it does restore Margaret's self-respect and make clearthe state of their marriage. Commendably tough-minded and unsentimental, but not very engaging.
With her usual insightful, carefully constructed plot, Anita Shreve (THE PILOT'S WIFE, THE WEIGHT OF WATER) presents a character-driven analysis of a marriage in crisis. Margaret and her husband, Patrick, go to Kenya for a year while he does medical research. On a climbing trip up Mt. Kenya, disaster occurs, causing a rift between the couple. Narrator Anna Stone slips comfortably into Shreve's intricately drawn characters and is particularly adept at accents—from African and Afrikaans to American, British, and Italian. In an engaging, intelligent reading, Stone delivers Shreve's depictions of Africa's extreme poverty, women's roles, the effects of tragedy and mistrust on marriage, and the existence of an indifferent universe. Shreve fans won't want to miss this challenging look at human relationships. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
DECEMBER 2009 - AudioFile
