Heights of bad attitude

Author Anita Shreve. Photo / Supplied

Anita Shreve is fascinated with relationships. And this story, which explores a new marriage set against the backdrop of Africa, puts yet another relationship under the microscope.

This time the setting is Kenya, where Shreve worked as an editor and travel writer during the mid-70s. She extensively mines her knowledge of the area - both political and social - for her latest novel. Indeed, it is an incident that takes place during a climb up Mt Kenya that is the pivotal event of the story.

Margaret, the heroine, is a young photo-journalist married to a doctor doing his time in Africa. He is busy: she is not. But although the novel is told through Margaret's voice, and uncaring young husbands can be infuriating, I found it almost impossible to build empathy with her.

Her inertia, especially around getting herself fit for the climbing expedition, is unconvincing. Indeed, until her husband apologises for not taking better care of her on the mountain, I had not realised that she was neglected. She seemed plain annoying.

On the upside, the working, angry Margaret is a more interesting character. The journalist she works with is more interesting still.

And we have been warned: The title of Shreve's novel, A Change in Altitude also, and more importantly, is about the power of a change in attitude.

Shreve is an accomplished, elegant, writer with a huge following. There are no plonky dollops of back-story here. Instead the descriptions of Kenyan life in the relatively settled, balmy '70s, is deftly woven around the human narrative. The colours, the animals, the social dynamics of the ex-patriot lifestyle of the day are well described. And the story, thin as it is, is delivered cleverly, with suspense that keeps the pages turning.

But when I closed the book for the last time I felt unsatisfied. The characters are too restrained, maybe too British, to make you care about them. Even Margaret's lacklustre husband doesn't deserve the treatment he gets.

Comparisons are odious but, when measured against Ann Michaels' The Winter Vault, the more risk-taking, blowsy, untidy novel of the same plot, it seems thin and unexciting.

A Change in Altitude
by Anita Shreve
(Hachette $38.99)

* Carroll du Chateau is an Auckland reviewer.