Reviews of The Rope Dancer
“A search for existential meaning, sex, drugs and climbing – what more could we ask for from a novel?”
Greg Pritchard, author of Climbing in Australia
Since antiquity, mountains have been terrain for poetry and philosophy as well as physicality. Rob Leach continues this tradition in a novel that combines gritty urban realism with a great tale of men and women in the mountains. From Melbourne’s back streets and the Wimmera wheat-fields, The Rope Dancer takes you on a compelling journey high into the Tian Shan, Central Asia’s Celestial Mountains. At the same time, The Rope Dancer tackles some of Nietzsche’s most important ideas: the need to create your own meaning in life, how the decadence of modern society deadens our sensitivity to beauty, the dangers of being trapped by past events, and the cyclical nature of life. The Rope Dancer is a rare kind of a book: funny, disturbing, sexy and wise.
Kate Rigby, author of Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism
“The Rope Dancer is a vigorous novel of the outdoors with a strong philosophical undercurrent. Leach explores the power of the natural world in a way few novelists achieve. His intimacy with wild places animates the story with a vivid physical texture.”
Michael Meehan, author of The Salt of Broken Tears (NSW Premier’s Literary Award Winner)
“On the surface, it’s a rip-roaring yarn. Underneath, The Rope Dancer is an intriguing journey through the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche and a modern re-telling of his great and confounding work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Unlike many commentators who focus on his nihilism, Leach’s interpretation of Nietzsche is at heart life affirming and passionate. Mountaineering in The Rope Dancer serves as a powerful metaphor for Nietzsche’s central message – that to live fully, we must live dangerously.”
Dr Ann McCulloch, author of Dance of the Nomad
“Sometimes it is only suffering that makes us truly cherish life. The Rope Dancer is a great story with a wise message.”
Jon Muir, author of Alone Across Australia
“It has been a pleasure for me to read The Rope Dancer. The novel is excellent work, with a thoroughly convincing central character and a next to flawless command of language and voice. The various sorts of subject matter and purpose are very smoothly integrated into a satisfying plot …
…Rick is utterly convincing as the central character and reporter … the other main characters come through as utterly entirely psychologically convincing individuals. The physical and historical environment is also impressively plausible. Inner Melbourne is socially and environmentally real … and the bush in Gariwerd is very convincing.”
Dr Robert Phiddian, Flinders University