Poet Helen Mort combines her love of climbing, nature and motherhood to explore the experience of women in this predominantly male environment, before and after having children, examining societal attitudes and the additional challenges women face.

Her admiration for fellow climber Alison Hargreaves, who died on K2, shines through as she tries to come to terms with becoming a mother and what that means for her desire for adventure.

I received an ARC of this book via netgalley. Shamefully. it has sat on my shelf for a long time. Quoted as being part memoir and part questioning why we are drawn to danger I expected more from this book. There is no doubt that the author has a beautiful literary style but for me it felt like it osat between two places without ever really fully grasping either.

The mountaineering felt more like a person besotted by another climber rather than anything else. Her memoir really struck me as someone in the midst of a post natal depression. The author is clear about having issues for some time, taking anti-depressants for a long time only stopping when she became pregnant. I felt that part of the book became rambling I lost the sense of continuity that i think the author hoped for.

It was a very quick read but not one that I will rave of to others

" A story of mountains and motherhood" is the tagline for this beautiful book, but that doesn't do it justice: it's about so much more than that. It's about the female experience, about grief. It's about family, and passion. It's about the affinity the author has always felt for fellow climber Alison Hargreaves, who died on K2. It's about both the Derbyshire landscape and the interior landscape, about the challenge and about the chase for something more, something bigger.

I've loved Helen's writing for a long time, and this foray into non-fiction was beautifully done - I'm completely unsurprised it is winning awards! I live in Derbyshire, so it had an extra layer of loveliness for me as I recognised a lot of the local spots Helen talks about, but you don't need to know the landscape to enjoy this book (neither, as others have said, do you need to be a climber or a mother).

A fabulous book, and I can't wait to read whatever Helen writes next.

Thank you to NetGalley, and to the publisher, for granting me a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Helen Mort has written an evocative and poetic book detailing her love of climbing and the effect of motherhood on how it shaped her experience with the mountains. This book immediately piqued my interest when I first read the blurb as I love hiking and have a young family so it really appealed to me.
It’s a beautifully told story with her love for the mountains and the challenges faced with bagging a climb intertwined with that of early motherhood. The fierce love she has for her child and the impacts that has on her climbing.
It’s also in part an ode to the female climber Alison Hargreaves who sadly lost her life on K2. She also had a young family and she draws so many parallels of their lived experiences with them trying to find a path in a male dominant sport.
The lyricism of Mort’s writing shines throughout the novel and it really is a unique and remarkable piece of writing. Highly recommend!

I am a fan of Helen Morton's poetry and so expected to enjoy this intriguing novel about mountain climbing and her life as a young mother. However I was rather disappointed that the book was not as absorbing as I had hoped. For me the subject did not fascinate or draw me in, despite it being a real passion of the author. I felt that, although the writing was poetic and powerful, it didn't convey her obsession to me. It seemed to fall between two genres of poetry and autobiography but failed to sustain my interest for very long. I am sure it will appeal to outdoor sports enthusiasts, but I am afraid it's not my cup of tea.

This was a wonderful read about Helen Mort’s relationship with the world of climbing and how this changed as she became a mother and the experience of both impacted the other. She draws comparisons between her own life and that of the famous climber Alison Hargreaves throughout.

This is a book largely on things I knew nothing about; I have never climbed and never will nor am I a mother. Despite this I found the author really relatable to. I loved her writing style and descriptions that transported me from words on a page to visual scenes in my imagination. Most of all though what stood out to me was Mort’s enthusiasm. I think there must be something in people who become climbers that gives them such a drive, focus and passion for scaling grand heights. Maybe everyone has such an extreme passion within them for a different thing only it is lived out far more in life and death situations when you’re scrambling up and down dangerous mountains! It was impossible to not find this pure joy contagious and I read this straight through in two sittings.

A fantastic book for anyone wanting to learn about something knew or looking for a new passion or interest- this might just spark one!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this would be more about mountain hiking, but it's really about the author's obsession with mountain (rock) climbing. The latter is an interest I don't share and the book didn't succeed in causing me to find the extreme sport compelling. It was only somewhat interesting to consider what makes people do such life-threatening things. However, that is a personal reaction and others may not share it. The writing was vivid and beautiful even if the subject was not to my taste.

A poet, a mountain climber, and a mother: one person. Helen Mort’s essays in A Line Above the Sky trace her experiences with climbing, motherhood, and climbing-and-motherhood, often by superimposing them on what she knows of her climbing idol, Alison Hargreaves.

When reading a memoir focussed on an author’s passions, some parts will ring true, and some may not. The memoir, after all, is the author’s truth. And passionate it is indeed - I have had but brief experiences with climbing, but Mort has the gift of transporting the reader to those crisp mountain mornings with gear on your back and a peak in the distance.

Slightly longer narratives are interspersed with short, poetic flights of thought - the latter following a direction I struggled to understand fully, but the rest gripping enough to keep going.

Mort’s reflections on the similarities and differences between herself and Hargreaves - that thought-experiment of looking into another’s life in order to find answers about your own - is something I can relate to, easily. It is notable that Mort explores the complicated relationship between climbing and motherhood: motherhood threatening to remove her from climbing, while climbing teaches her more about motherhood every day.

There is a trend where people - sportspersons, celebrities, authors - write books about motherhood; how it changes them. Not being a mother, I can’t claim to understand it all, but the uncomfortable sense that women must profess the impact that motherhood has on their lives, prevails. Yet Mort manages to steer clear of sentimental tropes, and makes no excuse for her loyalties to self and climbing.

Helen Mort has a gift for gently dissecting the history within her own passions - eventually delving deeper than her own experiences, to explore the history of climbing women, and how the climbing world’s treatment of women has been reflective of greater societal attitudes.

I imagine fans of the author will readily read this collection - as for me, I had never heard of her before this, and will recommend A Line Above the Sky to climbers of all levels of experience (including those who climb mostly in their dreams), as well as lovers of the outdoors. And yes, to mothers, too.

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir that brings motherhood and the great outdoors together. I understood Helen Mort's comparisons and her own journey to try to combine and enjoy both parenthood and mountaineering/rock climbing. I also enjoyed learning about the other experienced and successful climbers who Mort looked up to and felt were part of her life. This was a very atmospheric book and I really enjoyed taking in all of the emotions and scenery.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for my copy of this novel.

This is a beautiful, poetic memoir about mountains, risk and motherhood. Helen Mort, a climber and mother, looks at her life and the conflicting challenges she faces of responsibility and adventure. She compares her own situation to that of the climber and mother, Alison Hargreaves. The descriptions of landscape, mountains, and the Peak Distract hills are amazing - she evokes their wild, dangerous beauty with much verve and vibrancy. This is a fascinating, emotional and lyrical work - and well worth reading.
Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. All views are my own.

This is an account, more a meditation, on motherhood and climbing. The writer, who is also a poet, Helen Mort, has been climbing since early childhood. Becoming pregnant causes her to think more about her body, the child within her, and after her son Alfie is born she makes more and more links with another woman climber she admired - Alison Hargreaves and her son Tom Ballard.

The writing is beautiful, not poetry, but influenced in that there isn't a useless word or infelicitous phrase. I especially enjoyed it as Helen clearly lives very close to me in Sheffield and describes the streets I walk along as well as the Derbyshire hills I visit (but don't climb) regularly.

A short book and one well worth reading, whether or not you are a climber it is a fascinating and unusual piece. Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy.

This is a beautifully written book and a homage to climbing, to motherhood, and to Alison Hargreaves - a climber much admired by Ms Mort. It is obvious that Helen Mort is a poet and a master of the English language. Her ability to describe climbing to someone who has never attempted it, is awe inspiring. You can feel the wind and the tension. There is a lot here but it is a quick read as each chapter is a short vignette and you find yourself thinking, I’ll just read one more.

The passages about the author’s son Alfie and how he has changed her are very moving.

I am neither a mother nor a climber but I loved this book. It touches on humanity in a way that allows you to feel part of the adventure. And that’s a skill I admire.

I was given a copy of this book by Netgalley

Helen Mort has a distinguished career as a poet and author, but is not yet forty - which could be a problem with writing a memoir, if that memoir does not focus purely on a traumatic childhood (and hers wasn't - lonely and confusing perhaps, as many childhoods are, but this is not a JD Vance or Tara Westover memoir).

Sensibly, she combines her story with another's, finding seductive and scary parallels between her life and that of climber and mother Alison Hargreaves, who disappeared during a storm trying to climb the fierce mountain K2. (Later, Alison's son would suffer a similar fate as an adult on Nanga Parbat). It's clear that Mort is not going to be like Alison in terms of sending her son up mountains - when she takes him to his first baby bouldering session, she worries whether having clad him in an outfit with polar bears on (a symbol of extinction) is bad luck! - but like so many women and artists, she struggles with ambivalence. We meet her first of all giving birth to her son while she fantasises about a climb, with her ex-partner - who isn't the baby's father - imagining herself ascending higher into the clouds as she feels like dying in the final hours of the birth.

As well as being talented, Mort is beautiful, which complicates how she is seen and potentially how she sees herself. Though she documents her changing body during her pregnancy, she stops short of spelling out her own attractiveness - which is wise, as so many people pillory women for doing so, but she *is* beautiful and this is an important part of the story that isn't quite articulated. The idea of the gaze and perception that haunts the early part of the book comes to its head in the epilogue when she is made the subject of deepfake images on the internet - how this must have felt, particularly for an emotionally wobbly new mother, I can't imagine. Not many of us will have known what this must be like - not all of us are mothers, and only a handful of us will have done the type of climbing practised by Alison Hargreaves or even Helen Mort and her friends. Yet this book is relatable, and truly original.

A beautifully written book combining Helen Mort's talents and passions as both an award winning author and a climber. Helen's own experiences of climbing and motherhood are recounted alongside telling the tale of Alison Hargreaves and her son Tom Ballard who both tragically lost their lives in climbing accidents. Alison was arguably the greatest female UK climber ever. She summitted Everest alone in 1995 without the use of oxygen or the backup of a Sherpa team. Sadly she died later that year while descending K2.

Helen is in awe of Alison Hargreaves climbing record but when motherhood comes to Helen it makes her think more closely about what other female climbers do when faced with the dilemma of the responsibility of being a mother and wanting to do a potentially dangerous sport. The book is well written and there's a real sense of raw honesty coming from the author as she wrestles with the conflicting emotions she faces. Helen has written a lot of poetry which is evident in the writing style. Some chapters were written in the second person which gave a more poetic and personal feel to the prose.

With thanks to NetGalley and Ebury Press for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have read a lot of books that I feel have been written from the heart but this book is more than that. Helen Mort has spilled her heart right out onto the page and has done so using elegant, emotive, almost perfect prose. What a fabulous writer!

The book is a memoir that weaves the author’s dual experiences of climbing and motherhood and their impact on each other, as well as the story of two other climbers: Alison Hargreaves, who tragically lost her life while descending K2 in 1995, and her son Tom Ballard.

You do not have to be interested in climbing to enjoy this book. In fact, I would argue that it is better if you aren’t because you get to experience it through her words, living an experience that perhaps, like me, you would never have otherwise. Climbing has never been on my radar, yet, after reading this book, I feel that, for a short while at least, I got to partake in this exhilarating sport and find out what it really feels like to navigate rocky crags with just a rope to save me if I should fall. That is the power of beautiful writing.

Helen Mort has a talent for describing her inner emotions in a way that speaks to me and mirrors how I have felt in the past, such as feeling happier around men and insecure around women, and her descriptions of motherhood are so close to what I have felt but been unable to articulate, it is scary! In fact, I found myself nodding in agreement with a lot of the things she writes, realising that yes, I feel that, but have never tried or indeed had the ability to express my thoughts in such a way. The parts about being an only child and how that felt for her really resonated with me because I, too, have no siblings but could never really articulate how that made me feel. Then I read Helen’s perspective and thought, yes, that’s exactly how it feels.

Although this book talks a lot about climbing, sometimes it is used as a metaphor to underlie the author’s emotions and experiences, which is why you don’t need to be a climber to enjoy this book. It is a truly fascinating read and I recommend it if you like to read about another person’s experiences and thoughts and lives. This book certainly took me to places I had never been before!

Overall, this is an emotional, beautifully written book about the author’s experiences of climbing and motherhood, with the story of another climber and her fate woven throughout. It is fascinating, eye opening, compelling and thoroughly recommended. I absolutely loved reading it.

With thanks to Netgalley and Ebury Publishing for providing an advance review copy. All opinions in this review are my own.

This is a beautiful memoir where Helen Mort traces a few overlapping stories- that of her idol and fellow mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, Hargreaves' son- a mountaineer himself, and Mort's own personal adventure to find her own path through life.

In it, Mort recounts her childhood and her desire to follow in the footsteps of her idol, but also how being alone against the challenges of nature also give her the distance to grow, to think, and to convalesce.

Her perspective about the unique challenges for women in her field is fascinating- not only the lack of role models and the sexism faced directly when climbing, but also in the external perceptions, and how they enter into her own thinking- for example, is she being selfish by taking time away to climb and be outside, even though men rarely, if ever, get the same treatment.

A deceptively short read, this book was a beautiful insight into her world and the joys of being small in the presence of nature.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Revealing the strangeness of other lives, other choices: Mothers and Mountains

Non-fiction books which are both some kind of autobiography or memoir well written, and can take me into areas and experiences which are alien to my own, intrigue me.

And this is one.

Helen Mort is one of those beings who has felt the urge to push beyond physical limits into dangerous, exhilarating, possibly lethal territory. The payback being an absolute sense of tingling aliveness, focus and presence. She climbs mountains. Proper high altitude stuff where a false step might, and does, lead to fatalities.

I suffer from vertigo. I also have quite a well developed imagination, and also (if the writing is good enough – and it is, here) will subjectively enter into the experience the writer is describing.

Mort did not fill me with desire to go rockclimbing, though I do yearn for the experience (and sometimes get it) of being completely alone in ‘wild’ and surrendered to the natural world.

Instead, I felt quite sick, terrified, and panicky as she described her climbs – my imagination perennially making me dizzy as I thought about standing on the roof of the world looking down.

Mort is also a mother. I am not, but this is an experience, and a choice which awes me, that other women make. One I chose not to.

She writes equally transformationally, revealingly and vulnerably about the violent changes to her sense of self which pregnancy, childbirth, mothering gave and gives – the sense of her body and identity no longer being quite her own. The who she is of her, changed. The surrender demanded and taken by that helpless, powerful new life.

I am as much in awe of that generosity as at the fearlessness of surrender to the implacability of the high peaks.

This is also, in very large part, a celebration of other women mountaineers, of that community, and the engagement in an activity which has been, to a large degree, a manly club. And particularly a celebration of Alison Hargreaves, a fellow trailblazing mountaineer, and mother. Hargreaves and, indeed, a generation later, her adult son, both bitten by mountain fastnesses in their bloodstreams, despite being experienced, and skilful, died in this pursuit.

What I did viscerally understand, and have some personal engagement with, is Mort’s feminism. This territory I could access from my own experiences.

I was moved, engaged, humbled, exhilarated by this book. It is thought – and feeling – provoking and I am proof that a reader does not need to be either a mountaineer or a mother to be enriched by the read.

Ultimately, BOTH pursuits, scaling peaks, and bringing new beings into the world, absolutely life affirming

I received this as a digital ARC from the publishers, via Net Galley. To both of whom, thanks

This is an amazing book that moved, made me wish I could read it while being on a montain top, and love the great style of writing.
There's a lot of passion, there's experiences, the story of a climber, and reflections on motherhood.
It's a poignant and fascinating book.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Helen Mort writes thee most beautiful prose her story her life told in a lyrical manner.Her words are the words of the poet she is.Her description of the birth of her son told with her love for climbing.As someone who has a strong fear of heights I read about her love of climbing in awe.Her admiration for Alison Hargreaves a climber a mother of two whodied in a climbing accident seems to haunt her.I.I am looking forward to reading more poetry and prose by Helen Mort.#netgalley #ebury

A Line Above The Sky reads like poetry as Mort delves into her love of climbing, her admiration of Alison Hargreaves (a famous climber who tragically died climbing K2) and her experiences of new motherhood.

Whilst climbing isn't one of my passions, I appreciated the vivid pictures Mort painted of the Peak District, the raw honesty and I finished the book desperate to get out and see the places she writes of. Motherhood is a more familiar topic to me and through the comparisons it made everything feel more real. As a mother to a 3 month old, I found the writing on these early days the most poignant and honest and the struggles between being both a mother who wants to be with my child and a woman who wants to pursue my own passions were put into words so eloquently as Mort described this stage for both her and Alison. I don't think you have to be a climber or mother to appreciate this book but if you are it probably adds more depth.

Mort's admiration for Alison Hargreaves was evident from the beginning and the book felt like a joint autobiography as she shares the similarities in their lives. She also talks about Tom, Hargreaves' son who also died climbing at the young age of 21.

I really enjoyed reading A Line Above The Sky and really connected with Mort's writing.