Author(s): Andy Kirkpatrick (Griffith University, Australia)

Sport

Extreme climbing as therapy...slightly more expensive than a therapist. Psychovertical is the story of what happens to a nice lower-class kid with dyslexia who gains control over his circumstances by clinging to giant stone faces, thousands of feet in the air, for days at a time. In this case, Kirkpatrick uses his 12-day solo climb of the Reticent Wall on California's El Capitan as the experience that helps him understand how growing up poor and struggling with dyslexia and low self-confidence set him on a path of extreme adventure. Kirkpatrick's writing is gripping and highly entertaining even non-climbers will enjoy his raw intensity, gallows humor, and honest, self-deprecating storytelling style. This book is a Boardman Tasker Prize winner, which is recognition given for outstanding mountaineering literature. From the judges' remarks: "The book is very cleverly structured....The cuts from scene to scene and climb to climb work wonderfully well a sort of mountaineering Day of The Jackal as Kirkpatrick comes closer and closer to his nemesis on Reticent Wall. And it is this climb, the running narrative of the book, that grips the most: 14 pitches of aid climbing, unrelieved by conversation with a partner other than himself, should by rights be boring. But it grips the heart further and further."