First on the Rope, by Roger Frison-Roche. Translated by Janet Adam Smith. 246 pages. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950. Price, $2.75.

Written by a mountaineer and skier who is thoroughly familiar with the region of Chamonix, First on the Rope has already achieved status as a best-seller in France. Now, translated into English by Janet Adam Smith, author of Mountain Holidays, it is bound to turn up, I should think, on the reading lists of mountaineers throughout this country. So few works of fiction deal explicitly and at length with climbing that it would be very difficult to forego the pleasure of giving this one a trial.

The first part, “The Birth of a Vocation,” sets forth the circumstances of a fatal accident. Jean Servettaz, a guide of great experience and ability, reluctantly continues an ascent of the Dru, under threatening conditions of weather, at the insistence of his American client, Henry Warfield, Jr. Lightning strikes the party and kills Servettaz. The porter Georges à la Clarisse succeeds in bringing the hysterical Warfield down (“Alone with a loony on the Drus—what a nice trade a guide’s is!”), but suffers severe frostbite. Pierre

Servettaz, son of Jean, goes up with the party to recover his father’s body, but fractures his skull in a fall from the icy rocks. Georges loses all his toes, and Pierre develops acute vertigo. The second part, “The Making of a Guide,” tells how these two triumph over their handicaps, making together at last the ascent of the north face of the Aiguille Verte. In the course of the story, we are made acquainted with the friends, relatives and sweetheart of Pierre; and we learn something of their interest in hotels and cows, as well as in mountains.

First on the Rope, I can testify, provides highly satisfactory diversion for a Sunday afternoon; but it does elicit a couple of comments which, though not restricted in application to this book alone, may have to be considered adverse. First, the demon that limits the understanding of every one of us makes it extraordinarily difficult for a writer to draw a convincing character—a “whole person”—of nationality different from his own. Take this Henry Warfield, Jr., who is described as being affluent and as having a “passion for record times.” I should hesitate to deny that the traits of Warfield may be found to exist, severally or even together, in various climbing compatriots of ours; I say merely that M. Frison-Roche has not persuaded me of the reality of the bundle of traits called Warfield. Second, having noticed a drop in my interest after the first hundred pages or so, I fell to wondering just what can be done with mountaineering in a work of fiction. It would seem that there almost has to be a dramatic, and maybe even disastrous, climb. But the dramatic part of a climb can best be recounted in a few pages. If you stretch the story by piling on details of terrain or technique, or by following up the subsequent goings-on in the valley, or by putting in another dramatic climb, you impair the singleness of effect. Perhaps some day a writer of Melville’s stature will produce a mountaineering novel on the grand scale. Of the climbing stories now on the shelves, Montague’s “Action” seems to me still to have the most satisfactory shape and length for the purpose.

D.A.R., Jr.