The Ice Soldier

The protagonist of Paul Watkins' excellent novel "The Ice Soldier" is one William Bromley, a decorated veteran of the Second World War and former mountaineer, now working as a schoolteacher in London and living with some uncomfortable memories. In June of 1950, his seemingly settled life comes unglued in the face of three mysteries. Watkins will unspool these mysteries in parallel in the course of his narrative. The first mystery is what actually happened on a military operation in the Italian Alps in which Bromley led his pre-war climbing team. Bromley was decorated for his leadership but is haunted by his memories of the operation. The second mystery concerns the uncle of his best friend, who sent Bromley on his wartime mission and who is famous as the sole survivor of a fatal climbing accident during the conquest of a peak in the Italian Alps. His unexpected suicide places an stunning obligation on Bromley. The third mystery is the outcome of a journey of redemption undertaken by Bromley and his best friend, each for his own reasons, on behalf on the dead uncle. Watkins' narrative follows Bromley on his journey in the present, periodically circling back to his wartime journey to the Italian Alps. Watkins's prose and grasp of telling details in set-piece vignettes are often pitch-perfect, whether the action takes place in a London Club, an English boarding school, an Italian village, or the wreckage of a plane in the Italian Alps. His description of an alfresco meal in a field in Italy is an example of a simple but memorable piece that adds surprising depth to the narrative. The storyline is complicated by the need to account for the interactions of multiple characters. Watkins does very well when his characters interact face to face, but less well when the storyline is stitched together by sometimes awkward chunks of exposition. This novel is highly recommended to the reader looking for an entertaining story, especially those with an interest in climbing and the changes mountains make in people's lives.

THE ICE SOLDIER, by Paul Watkins. The story is set six years after the Second World War. It deals primarily with two characters, William Bromley and his colleague Stanley Carton. William is the main character. The story is told through him. Both William and Stanley were involved in a disastrous mission during the War. In which they had to climb the Alps, to set up a beacon which would assist the navigation of Allied bombers. After the war, William decides never to climb again. Yet the memories from this ill-fated mission are engrained in his mind. So that when he is asked, together with Stanley, to once again climb the Alps, he sees this as the chance to rid himself of all his self-doubts and illusions. To forever banish the demons that his mind has conjured since the events of that war-time mission. The relationship that William shares with his Father, has a bearing on William's decision to once again journey to the Alps. Pringle, an eccentric and rather annoying character in his own right, holds a life-time grudge against Stanley's Father, Henry Carton. It is the death of Henry Carton that is the prime factor in motivating William and Stanley to undertake this difficult and challenging climb. Their task - to reach the peak of a mountain in the heart of the Alps, known as Carton's Rock. Taking with them, a special and rather macabre piece of `luggage` It is with the start of the actual climb, that the story takes on it's true dimension. I suppose the novel could be described as being in two parts. The not always plausible sequence of events, and rather eccentric characters that lead up to the eventual climb. And the subsequent narration by Paul Watkins of the bid to reach the summit of Carton's Rock. The author's narrative of the glacier as well as the mountain - it's savagery as well as alien beauty - is as powerful as it is engrossing. He writes with such persuasion that it is easy to be part of this climb. Along side William and Stanley. To experience with them, the hostile environment of the glacier. To share their deprivations of hunger and exhaustion. To witness with them, the fury of the ice storm. To feel their fear of the hidden crevasse and to marvel at their endurance.

I am a huge fan of Paul Watkins. Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn is as good as it gets. Watkin's books have great characters. Some have terrific action. This book falls short of the others. There is good action late, but, most disappointingly, the characters do not shine. After a slow start, or slow first half, the main characters head to the Alps for what appears to be a suicide mountain climbing "mission". They take it on to face the ghosts of their pasts which have been laboriously drawn in the first half. Once the two start their trek, the writing and pace improve and the book is very good. The problem is the first half, plus. The narrator as a character is flat. The plot switches - slowly - back and forth from the narrator's WWII experience and the present to set the stage for the mountain climb. Somehow the the characters do not quite work. Even the aging eccentric showman mountaineering guru does not leap off the page with a personality that fits his persona. The reader does not feel conflict, although he senses it is meant to be there. One the stage is set, the narrator and his best friend head to the glacier to fulfill the mission set for them by the guru. As noted, this is when the novel catches the reader's attention and becomes an action novel. The descriptions of the characters at the Alps and then the climb are very good and more of what can be expected from Mr. Watkins. This is a good read, just not up to Watkins' norm, so do not judge him by this book. But hang in after the slow start, it is worth it.

At the beginning of Paul Watkins's outstanding new novel The Ice Soldier, narrator William Bromley embraces his quiet life. Just six years before, he served as a British soldier during World War II, and he now teaches English at a small boys' school. To pass the time, he plays cards with two colleagues, avoids the woman he has a crush on, and meets for a weekly wine binge with his old friend Stanley. When the appearance of a former comrade Sugden triggers intense flashbacks to a failed mission in the Italian Alps, Bromley knows he is in trouble. His best friend Stanley does not understand his crisis, and instead presses him to meet the new love of his life, Helen Paradise ("Hell and Paradise?"), who, unlike the two men, has not given up mountaineering. Bromley seems destined to lead a quiet but tortured life while Stanley heads toward the inevitable break-up with Helen. When Stanley's uncle Carton ensures that the "Society of Former Mountaineers," as Stanley and Bromley call themselves, will disband, the two men find themselves faced with their internal demons in ways neither had imagined. At the center of this novel lies Carton's Rock, a "jagged pinnacle of stone and ice which rose almost sheer out of a glacier." Named after Stanley's uncle Carton, the only person said to have reached its summit, the peak--or rather, the idea of it--has become a kind of tourist attraction in London, where Carton makes a living out of his retelling of his harrowing expedition. To Bromley, Carton's Rock carries its own diabolical memories, ones which threaten to cripple him every day. Still, he is drawn to the stark beauty of it rising out of the treacherous glacier. Stanley sees Carton's Rock as a symbol of his uncle's control, and he rebels against it, although as a younger man he would have liked to scale it. Even Helen has seen the Rock, and, safe in London, she regrets not getting closer to it. This duality, of both desire and desperate distance, gives The Ice Soldier its shape. Watkins evokes post-World War II Britain with the same astonishing clarity that he uses to describe the abject loneliness of the mountain climber and his adversary, the mountain itself. The narrator's flashbacks to the war are vivid and horrifying. The most accomplished aspect of this novel, however, is how Watkins gets into the hearts of his characters with the surety of his razor-like prose. As the characters get closer to Carton's Rock and all that it symbolizes, the rawness of what lies inside each is exposed much like the bones of Archie, the skeleton Carton seats at the head of his London dinner table. The metaphor of the mountaineer as losing everything but his bones, of being stripped of flesh and spit back out decades after being swallowed by a glacier, serves as a warning to the characters, who must learn the truth not by dreaming about it, but by climbing. The reader is only too willing to accompany them. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough

I thought this was an excellent book. Paul Watkins has created a parallel universe which seems very real. I won't spoil the plot but suffice to say it'll have you reaching for your old Nat Geo mags to see if this actually occured. It's that believable. His characters are warm, slightly-battered and very human. The 1950s setting draws you in and keeps you there. The research that's gone into the period-details seems spot-on. Anyone who has read earlier Watkins' books expects slightly-macho heroes. He doesn't disappoint here but William Bromley, the protagonist, is somewhat more sympathetic and flawed than earlier characters. Paul Watkins' work is simply getting better with age. If Indiana Jones and Ernest Hemingway had met on a freezing mountaintop then this would have been the result. But seriously - the plot reveals a subtle complexity and new maturity, that makes this astonishing but quiet book, linger on in your memory after you've finished reading it. It was come back into you head days aftewards, making you wonder if you;d actually dreamt about it initially. Everyone knows that Paul Watkins will one day hit the headlines, top the charts and write the Great Novel - this could be the warm up for that accolade. A brilliant story, by one of the greatest writers of his generation.