Multiple-choice cloze
For questions 1-8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.
Most climbing memoirs follow a familiar : an ambitious young climber sets out, disaster strikes, and the survivor returns home a wiser person. What sets Ruth Calloway's The Thin Air Between apart is her refusal to let herself off the . Recounting a 1990s expedition to a remote Himalayan peak on which two of her companions died, she makes no attempt to the decisions she took at high altitude, several of which, she now admits, on recklessness. Calloway writes with an unflinching precision that never into self-pity. Her account of the final night on the mountain, when the team's radio failed and the weather closed in, is all the more harrowing for being so told. Equally impressive is her portrait of the climbing world of the time, with its fierce rivalries and its habit of ranks against outsiders. If the book has a weakness, it lies in the closing chapters on her later life as a mountain guide, which feel somewhat on. But this is a minor quibble about a book that deserves a readership well beyond the climbing world.
Tip: click a gap number to jump to its question.