On Not Climbing Mountains

I know how large a call this is, but I am saying it aloud now: this is the year’s best novel. Claire Thomas has created a perfect and ingenious story – I felt humbled with joy and anguish as I read each perfect line. The novel’s concept is simple. A woman is grieving her father’s death and travels to his home country, Switzerland, just for a month, to uncover his influences. She travels with a seeking mind and a copy of a guidebook from 1891. At each stop, she finds an art form: photos, paintings, novels, music or even numerology, and traces her connection from end to end. I cannot even comprehend the amount of research that has gone into this celebration of what makes us human. Yes, this is a novel about grief and legacy, but it is also an ode to understanding where we come from and how that affects us now.

Thomas writes about actors, musicians, writers, dreamers and artists, roads and pathways that lead her up mountains and into alleyways, through galleries and memories. Consider this novel the delicious epitome of the butterfly effect, where tiny changes in a complex system can lead to vast, beautiful or horrific outcomes. And then consider art in all its forms and the impact it has on your being. Thomas has connected these specks from all over the world and gifts them to you, whether you are reading on the tram, or by the pool, or when everyone in your home is asleep except you. On Not Climbing Mountains is a tonic for those seeking an answer to all we are experiencing in the world presently. It is a novel that gives hope.

I recommend this unique novel to you with my entire being.