Change In Altitude

Anita Shreve wrote A Change In Altitude,  I got this book because I like Anita Shreve and because I like to read stories set in Kenya, a place I have been lucky enough to visit. The story is about a newly married couple, Margaret and Patrick. Patrick is a doctor studying diseases of the equator. Margaret is a lost young wife who eventually gets a job taking photographs for a Kenyan newspaper. Margaret is a passive character. When her husband announces they are going to climb Mount Kenya in two weeks, she hardly has any reaction. She could have said no because she really didn't want to go but she doesn't. She goes along and the trip is a disaster. She is slower than all the other hikers and feels like she is holding up the group (something I can relate to). One of the other hikers has a fatal accident and the hike is called off before they reach the summit. This accident is a challenge to Margaret and Patrick's marriage. They drift apart. Patrick becomes a shrill and accusatory husband.  For the middle third section of the book, almost everything Patrick says drives her away.  Margaret drifts in a passive cloud into love with another man. A year passes. Patrick suggests they climb Mount Kenya again, together as a couple, to patch up their marriage. He is proposing to duplicate the situation that set the marriage on a rocky course in the first place. Some parts of the book I liked including her description of the Nairobi airport, the lodge at the foot of Mount Kenya, and altitude sickness. I liked it when she wrote a few rods in Swahili because I still remember a little bit of the language and it is good to hear it again. I think Anita Shreve did a better job of character development in other books than this one.