I was really interested in reading We Begin Our Ascent by Joe Mungo Reed, a book about professional cyclists skirting the edge of safety and legality in an effort to surpass the competition. I am a recreational cyclist and so far from the level of the characters in this book that we aren't even in the same galaxy, but I am very curious about the world of the pros. In this fictional account of a domestique, a cycling team member whose job it is to help the team leader win, we read about Sol (short for Solomon) and how he tries to hang on to his position on a pro team racing in the Tour de France. When legal supplements turn to something dirtier and darker, Sol feels he has no choice but to join his team members, even if he doesn't feel right doing it.

I liked this book, but the writing wasn't my favorite. The language felt stunted and choppy, with sharp corners and no ease. And yet the story was compelling. I am fascinated with the psychology of the peloton, the large group of leaders that work together while also competing against one another. This book takes the reader inside that machine and lets us see how the little moving parts all work together. I also felt disappointed that the ending felt so abrupt and without any resolution. Overall, this novel was intriguing and I really enjoyed the peek behind the curtain of the world of pro cycling.

An engaging look into what it takes to be a man, husband, and father participating in the Tour De France.

I am not a sports fan and usually, sports-related books are not really my thing and I wouldn't usually pick one up. Fortunately, this book revolves more around the world and the competitivity around the sport more than the sport itself. That being said, I do think that this book was enjoyable enough. The characters were likable and the plot was as well,

Published by Simon & Schuster on June 19, 2018

In part, We Begin Our Ascent is about wanting things we can’t have precisely because we can’t have them. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be the best, but the desire for the unattainable pushes good people to make bad choices.

We Begin Our Ascent is also about recognizing and celebrating the things that are more important than accomplishment. Being alive and in good health. Loving and being loved. Living with honor and acquiring wisdom.

To frame those themes, Joe Mungo Reed wrote We Begin Our Ascent as the Inside Baseball of bicycle racing. Without becoming a racing manual, the story integrates information about how racers prepare, how they work as a team, how they decide which performance enhancing drugs are best. The novel conveys an understanding that the sport of bicycle racing at the professional level is more than a game, that “the dedication, the logic and attention applied make it vivid, real and meaningful.”

Solomon is part of a bicycle racing team that is sponsored by a poultry company. His job is to help Fabrice, the strongest mountain rider, win. Sol’s job is not to win; he knows he cannot win. But the longer he can sustain the pace while riding in front of Fabrice, the more energy Fabrice will conserve, and the better will be Fabrice’s chance of powering up the mountain ahead of everyone else at the end of the toughest stretches in the race. The crowds cheer for each rider without realizing that most of them are not trying to win as individuals, but as a team.

Sol is happiest when he is part of the peloton, the mass of bicycles that race in a clump until the best riders pull out and compete for victory. Sol knows his place in the universe, and his place is in the peloton. At the same time, he learns that helping the team will require him to engage in the rampant doping that gives his competitors an edge.

Sol’s wife studies the genetics of zebra fish. She admires Sol’s dedication, while her mother wonders what kind of career can be made of riding a bicycle. They are balancing recent parenthood with their dedication to busy careers that keep them apart for much of the year.

Part of the novel’s drama comes from pressure to involve Sol’s wife in the transportation of performance enhancing drugs and the oxygen-rich blood that riders use to restore their vigor.

Of course, the race itself delivers the inherent drama of competition. Riding down mountains at speed is both exhilarating and dangerous. Joe Mungo Reed makes sure the reader is always conscious of the risk that a rider takes.

Both racing and doping carry risks, and those risks generate a surprising amount of suspense. The reader’s anticipation of the novel’s climax makes it even more powerful.

We Begin Our Ascent is a quiet and elegant novel. The story is interesting and entertaining until, like a bicycle racer who has found his rhythm, it shifts gears and reaches another level. The novel raises profound questions about balancing competition against our other drives, balancing winning against integrity, balancing success against loss. The novel spotlights the difficulty of making life-changing choices (not just deciding what is morally right, but what is right for our lives) and illustrates both the profound consequences of making the wrong choice and the randomness that might determine whether a choice is right or wrong.

In a climax that is deeply moving, We Begin Our Ascent reminds us that our lives are different from the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. Discovering what is at the root of our lives, the things that are truly important, is an even bigger struggle than peddling up a mountain. Few novels have made that argument as persuasively as We Begin Our Ascent.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I loved this book and found it to be really melancholy, at the same time. Beautifully written, beautifully drawn characters. I will be thinking about this one for a while after having finished.

"Cycling is about moving through air."
This in my opinion speaks of what professional cycling and how it consumes the cyclist. I was skeptical at first but became interested as ki read the book. The storyline is also very centered around winning and how life outside cycling plays a role, and the influence that happens both ways. I would definitely recommend this book

As a former sportswriter I was lucky enough to cover the Tour due France one year. To say it is the most difficult sporting event I have witnessed is not enough; it tests muscles and nerves and the human will to an extraordinary degree. i remember a veteran writer saying as he watched a start for the umpteenth time, "what they are asked to do is truly heroic." Joe Mungo Reed has captured that heroism, as well as the mundane parts of the Tour and the stresses placed on riders by teammates, sponsors, team leaders and yes, themselves. He neatly interweaves the life of a marriage of the protagonist, which has its own ups and downs, just like the course. And, of course, there is the ever-present lure of the needle and the pill and why to a rider this extra regimen may seem sensible, even while the outside world condemns it. The reader need not care about cycling to enjoy this book; the cyclist will care deeply.

Sol has been a professional cyclist for years but has never achieved any real fame or fortune. His wife, Liz, a geneticist, and their son, Barry, are back home in England while Sol is busy trying to help his teammate, Fabrice, win the Tour De France. In a sport in which some people are willing to cheat their way to victory, Sol is forced to decide what he is willing to risk to get to the top.

For a decent portion of the book, I wasn't really feeling the story or characters but by the end I came to appreciate how it ended up being a bit different from what I normally read. While I enjoy most sports, cycling has never been my thing and in all honesty until reading this book I never entirely understood the whole "working as a team, but there's only an individual winner in the end" concept of the sport. But even if you don't find cycling all that exciting, this book brings up some interesting ethical questions in which you find yourself asking what lengths you would be willing to go for yourself or for your spouse. I'd say take a chance on this book if you are looking for something a bit different and can handle an ending that maybe doesn't answer all your questions.

In these internet times, blurbs are often the entry point for book reading, and that is true in the case of We Begin Our Ascent, a debut fiction novel from Joe Mungo Reed. The description proffered a look into the life of professional cyclist, Sol and his research biologist wife, Liz as they navigate various moral choices. There’s nothing wrong with that description, however, I’ll add for potential readers that the novel follows Sol during the Tour de France, so scenes of Sol and Liz’s married life are mostly seen through memories.

We begin our ascent

If I’d known that the book described Sol’s grueling, punishing days spent on the Tour de France, I might have passed over the novel, and that would have been my loss. The book could be categorized as a sport novel, but that categorization is limiting. Essentially this is a novel about how far we are prepared to go to achieve our goals, and just how much we are willing to sacrifice.

We join Sol on day 12 of the Tour de France. Sol is a “domestique,” It’s his job to support team leader, Fabrice:

We are competing only to get our team leader, Fabrice, across the twenty-one stages of this tour in as little time as possible. This cumulative time, the criteria on which the winner of the tour is judged, is all that matters to us. Our own results are not important. We shade him from the wind, pace him, will give him our own bike if he punctures. These measures have just small effects upon his time, yet this is a sport of fine margins–decided by difference of seconds after days and days of riding–and so small advantages, wrung from our fanatical assistance of our strongest rider, offer our team the best chance of victory. We only think of the ever-rising time it takes Fabrice to make his way through this race, how that time compares to his rivals’, how we may act to lessen it.

Some days the route is mountainous, and other days the land is flat. Before and after each day’s race, as Sol makes his preparations, he thinks of Liz, a specialist in Zebra fish, and how they met. So we see two people with extremely different career goals pursue an elusive end-point. While Liz’s colleagues “marveled at her fluency” in her specialist field, “in her actual accomplishment of the position she had built so long toward, she was truly faced for the first time with the scant effect of the work she had chosen, the world’s apparent indifference to all her expertise.” In contrast to Liz, to those outside of the cycling world, Sol appears to have some sort of stardom, but Sol realises, like most athletes, that he has a short shelf life, and he will never be a household name.

“It must be nice to be able to succeed to clearly,” she said. “To have such definite parameters. Clear successes. No one is cheering me in my lab.”

I knew next to nothing about the Tour de France before reading this book, and since I’m not that interested in sport, it’s to the author’s credit that I enjoyed this novel. But then again, the plot rises above sport, racing, training and instead hits obsession and moral dilemmas when Sol reveals various strategies involving drugs. We spend days with Sol as part of the peloton, his grueling routine, his life of preparation, deprivation and superstition:

I had assumed, when I became a professional, that things would be more intense, somehow, more vivid, and real. The reality, though was that my life had become smaller. I prohibited myself from many things, set myself a limited pattern of thinking. It is perhaps obvious in hindsight, but obsession does not give you more, but less.

I loved the vivid scenes when Sol recalls how he tried to explain his career to skeptical his in-laws who don’t get that the Tour de France isn’t about Sol winning, and Sol’s dialogues with former cycling champion, now coach Rafael were simply brilliant. One night, Sol is called to a meeting with his coach in the hotel basement:

“What do women like about men?” he said. “What does your wife like about you?”

“Conversation?” I said.

He shook his head.
“Commitment? Empathy?” He kept shaking.”Jokes? Cooking?”

“Okay, okay, okay,” he said. “Perhaps all of those things a little bit, but what they like a lot is height. Of all the James Bonds only Daniel Craig has been under six foot. And what is Daniel Craig?”

He mimed flicking something off the table. “A little goblin.”

“I like Casino Royale,” I said.

“Of all the Bonds, only Roger Moore has the true British style.” Rafael wrinkled his nose. There was rattling from the laundry chute and a ball of towels shot out. “Women like height. So in the chase for this, how you say, ‘hypothetical girl in our village,’ height is important.”

“Okay,” I said, “I can see that.”

“And it is man’s nature to maximize every advantage.”

The novel’s conclusion seems a little moralistic, and prior to that, the plot was much more sophisticated and deserved, IMO, a slightly different ending. Still, in spite of that, I was glued to every entertaining, thoughtful page.

review copy

I know absolutely nothing about professional cycling other than snippets I've seen in the news from time to time. I think if I had more knowledge of the sport I might have found this book more engaging but it was somewhat interesting nonetheless. I can't say I loved it, but the writing was fairly good and though I didn't especially care for any of the characters, they were well depicted,.

This is a book that would be especially appealing to the sports enthusiast.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book (and the cover!) but in all honesty when I started reading, I wasn't sure how I would feel by the end. I enjoy good stories that center around the world of sports but I do not enjoy stories about sports, in my mind, there is a big difference. Fortunately, this was a story that centered around the world of competitive cycling. While the book is very much about cycling and the main character's obsession with the sport, it is also very much about the ethics of winning and how the decisions we make impact the lives around us. I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a quick, fiction book.

I admit to being a bit skeptical when I started this but - WOW. This is a fascinating novel about bicycle racing, ambition, teamwork, and life in general. The Tour de France has played in the background of my consciousness but except for what I learned years ago from watching the movie Breaking Away, I really know very little about the sport. Reed has written an incredibly enlightening novel, with a sympathetic hero in Sol. Sol's been on the circuit but he's not someone who will ever win the Tour but rather a rider to boost the scores of his team's best rider, Fabrice. These two have a complicated relationship but one which is less fraught than the one they both have with Raphael, the team manager. Joe is married to Liz, a post doc studying zebra fish and the mother of their child B. Raphael wraps Liz into a scheme; no spoilers. This is in many ways a very small novel- it's close- you feel the road, can smell the sweat of the riders, can sense their pain. I liked it so much more than I anticipated and thank the publisher for the ARC. Try this one, even if you aren't a sports fan, for a well written novel that you'll find to be a page turner.

This debut novel by Joe Mungo Reed is a fascinating look into the world of professional cycling and doping. For readers who are just looking for a literary story with strong character development, this may not be the book for them, as it does dive deep into the sports fiction world/cycling world. Sol's story is developed with greater nuance than his wife's, Liz. Even with this shortcoming, it's a strong opener for Reed and will surely be a talked about book this summer.

This book provided an inside look at professional cycling and performance-enhancing drugs. The main character is training and competing in the Tour de France, meanwhile his marriage and personal life, are going to pieces. I enjoyed riding the slippery slope down into doping with Sol, he just wanted to be on a level playing field and everyone was doing it! It's not a fair race if you can't compete at the same level, they are just supplements, they won't show up, people are counting on you! When I was younger I would be so disappointed when an athlete I idolized would get caught doping. After reading this book, I see how it is a long and slow process like boiling a frog, the using sneaks up on you.

A score from NetGalley and an honor to read this pre-published book. I absolutely loved it. Reed's prose is beautiful - so beautiful that he held my interest on a topic I have NEVER been interested in (road race bicycling); the topic drove the book while simultaneously being a metaphor for human relationships, for choices we make in life, for marriage and parenthood, and Reed's particular way of portraying human behavior is perceptive and perfectly described without being flowery. Well done, especially for a first book. Very well done.

This just wasn't for me. The narrative was unbalanced and nothing about the story compelled me to read it.

The writer assumes the reader knows quite a bit about competitive bike racing (I did not) and maybe this is a better read if that knowledge is already present. I found myself unable to connect with the main character or any of the supporting characters. The main character's wife, Liz, was someone I found particularly unlikable.

The big name reviews for this are confusing and misleading.

A sports novel, We Begin Our Accent takes place in the peloton of professional bike racing. But, although firmly entrenched in this world, the novel is very much a story of a marriage. For me, I just did not build empathy for the main character, which kept me from truly enjoying this book.

Joe Mungo Reed’s 256-page debut novel, “We Begin Our Ascent,” is an extended metaphor for marriage.

Marriage is like a peloton — a race where partners take turns leading and leaning against the other though hills, mountains and plateaus. Horrific crashes might come between them, but they need the other racer for it to work — just like how Solomon needs his wife Liz to raise their infant son Barry. Just like how directeur sportif Rafael needs his cyclists Fabrice, Solomon, Tsutomo, Johan and Sebastian to wear poop-colored shorts, to satisfy their corporate chicken nugget sponsor and to win the Tour.

Written in first person, “We Begin Our Ascent” cycles between Solomon’s relationship with his wife Liz and the Tour. Both have been all-consuming and collaborative with their own peaks, plateaus and falls.

But “We Begin Our Ascent” plateaus until about four chapters into the book when we’re introduced to new terrain.

Naturally, new terrain requires new shoes, or as Rafael pitches, “built-up shoes for cycle races” — the kind of thing that would strip a man of his Tour de France titles or strip a country of its flag, logos and colors (if caught).

But, as Rafael rations, it’s a harmless open secret and everyone does it.

“Maybe you hope the others will be disqualified in many years’ time. Perhaps you want to win in the small print, be a little asterisk, but I thought you might actually want to cross the line first, hear the cheering of the fans,” says Rafael. “Then perhaps one day, as a man of such excellent moral judgment, you would have acquired the necessary stature to speak and be listened to on the subject of built-up shoes and they’d be banned forever and we would have you to thank.”

So Solomon makes a Faustian marriage with the devil and wears the shoes, which eat at his heels, holding his integrity, marriage and livelihood as collateral.

Perhaps “We Begin Our Ascent” should have been named “We Begin Our Descent” because the Reed’s book is really about a fall — how far and fast a man can go down a hill and what he takes with him.

Disclaimer: I received a free ebook of “We Begin Our Ascent” by Joe Mungo Reed from Netgalley for this review.

Got this ARC in exchange of an honest review from Simon & Schuster via NetGally. Thank You!!

I picked this one up because of its cover. (Its quite pretty!!) Its a sports fiction and the writing style is quite interesting. I enjoyed the way writer described the pressure, the drive, the frustrations a sports person face in his life.

But I don't know why I could not get engaged with it. The reason could be that I am not a sports person, so I don't get the drive why I should take drugs or abuse my body for winning a race. I know this happens a lot in real life, still I could not relate to Sol. The whole book described their ( both Sol and Liz's ) drive for their professions but very less details about who they really are or what is the base of their relationship.

Anyways... It was a good read none the less. My rating for this book is 3.5/5

Looking forward to read more by this author.

This one grabbed my attention with its cover, it’s an awesome cover. But then it also had such accolades from well known names, most auspicious for a debut, so why not. It actually turned out quite a good read. Thing is though I don’t like competitive sports, I don’t get the appeal, can’t relate to the sort of maddening dedication it requires or understand the singlemindedness it takes just to get to the finish line before the other guy. My idea of a competitive sport is Jeopardy. And this is very much a book about a what one might refer to as a proper sport, the exhausting and dangerous pursuit of an arbitrary goal that has no meaning in a grand scheme of things outside of its own micro world. I’m a firm believer in the power of a written word, a genuine talent can take on any subject and make it compelling and it pretty much the case here for the most part. This book puts you into a bike saddle and in the middle of the race, the dynamic of it is just right, but then again do you want to spend that much time in a bike saddle faux racing as it were? I like biking very much, have been riding for ages, but for me it’s always been more of a commuting vehicle and maybe occasional fun. The riding in this book, the professional kind, is more along the lines of a really intense endurance exercise that veers into a form of self abuse. And while the descriptions of the actual races are meticulous, the motivations behind it are less so. In fact, this isn’t just about biking for the protagonist, it’s also the other side of the coin, the life outside the race, a marriage, fatherhood, etc. It’s meant to be a story about priorities. It is, really that. It’s just…not quite balanced within the narrative. Possibly on purpose. All the maddening passion of the race and such muted version thereof in the personal life. It’s quite a striking juxtaposition. Again, possibly it’s because Solomon (an unusually named young man) simply doesn’t have the energy for the outside world, but his entire marriage plotline just had this lifelessness to it. It would have been nice to understand the appeal the racing held for Solomon and his wife, instead of just this odd acquiescence to such a brutal career choice under such a cruel manipulative boss. Maybe it was just a designated tone for the book. It works, it is in fact an auspicious debut, though maybe not quite as much so as the accolades would leave one to believe. I enjoyed it intellectually, though on the emotional level there was some frustration and bewilderment (strictly personal and subjective) that got in the way of engaging with the story. Thanks Netgalley.