12-11-07 The Night Climbers by Ivo Stourton - Fiction

2 - From the description on the jacket, I expected a bit of an action/thriller with building climbing escapades providing the backdrop for the story. WRONG! There are only, maybe, 12 pages describing the group's night climbing. The rest of the story is about a group of spoiled college kids, with the narrator being the odd man out being from a family with an average financial income, whose money supply is cut off. Amid increasing gambling and shopping debts, Francis, the cash cow of the group, hatches a plan involving a forged Picasso to get their extravagant lifestyle back on track. The narrator, James, is a whiny, wishy-washy boy/man without any truly redeeming qualities; Francis is a stereotypical moneyed bad boy who actively tries and succeeds in being disowned by his wealthy father; Jessica is a shallow, thin character with only beauty on her side; Michael is the epitomy of a pompus ass. the only character who is remotely interesting is Lisa, and the reader learns next to nothing about her. For me, this was an extremely disappointing book focused primarily on the limitlessness of excess.