À la Verticale de soi

Stéphanie Bodet gives back to Alpine literature a freshness and intensity that we thought had been lost.

This is the story of an asthmatic child who clutches a stone in her hand during the ordeal of gym class. Of a sensitive little girl who likes to lose herself off the beaten track. Who, for as long as she can remember, has chosen to look down on her life, vertically at herself. Especially since that crack, that of a little sister who disappeared too soon and who gave her wings: "To live. Live intensely", she writes. Lost to sport, Stéphanie Bodet has nevertheless given herself to climbing. She recounts the intensive training, the competition podiums, then the years of vertical wanderings on walls lost in jungles, the icy bivouacs under the stars. And the fertile love that unites him with Arnaud Petit.

At the time of her rendezvous with herself, she tells her story with total sincerity, listening to the torments of her soul and her body. More than a playground, the walls are for Stéphanie a territory of knowledge and recognition. Blending in with nature, becoming one with the swallow or the pine tree, to experience her true nature. The climber experiences climbing as a poetic act, a path of fearlessness and wisdom. To accept life at all costs, and perhaps succeed in rising, in every sense of the word.

Mountain Book Prize 2017 at the International Alpine Film Festival of Les Diablerets

Author: Stéphanie Bodet, 2016
Preface: Sylvain Tesson
Language: French
Number of pages: 304
Size: 15 cm x 21 cm