About.com Rating
- Gold by Chris Cleave was released in July 2012
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- 321 Pages
Gold is Chris Cleave's third novel, and it is the one that made me realize Incendiary and Little Bee were not flukes. Cleave can write, and I hope I get to read everything he does.
When I first read that Gold was about athletes preparing for the 2012 Olympics and that the novel was coming out the same month as those Games, I thought the whole thing was a little contrived and expected the story might not be very good.
I'm so glad I was wrong (at least about the quality). Even if the timing seems like a marketing ploy, I don't care. Gold is a great book, and it actually did get me more excited about watching the Olympics (and watching an obscure sport that I otherwise would have ignored).
The main action in Gold takes place over a week, but readers experience years of background through well done flashbacks and reflections. The novel follows Kate and Zoe, two British athletes who are training in Olympic cycling. They are 32, and this is both their last chance at gold. Events in Zoe's past have driven her to win at all cost. Meanwhile, Kate's daughter has leukemia, and she struggles with how to be a good mother and an athlete.
If the premise sounds emotionally manipulative, that's because you have forgotten how deft Cleave is at writing. I didn't want to put this novel down. I became invested in all the characters, and could not turn the pages fast enough at the climax. There were some scenes early on when I thought the dialogue seemed a little unnatural, but the more I learned about the characters, the easier it was for me to believe the conversations.
Even if the characters are not entirely realistic, it is easy to forget this fact when you are swept up in Cleave's narrative.
One of the things I've come to appreciate most about Cleave is his ability to go deep into hard, sad issues without leaving readers lost in existential gloom. How can one write about genocide or children with cancer without making readers feel hopeless and depressed? Yet somehow, Cleave does. There is something in his books that is good and hopeful without being trite or overly simple. There are no illusions about life being anything other than hard (and very unjustly so for some people), but there is still the possibility that it can be good, and maybe even that good will ultimately prevail. This goodness doesn't come in big answers or grand gestures, but in characters who choose not to run or who keep a brave face next to a hospital bed.
Cleave writes about moral complexity without arrogance or pretense. He writes characters who seem real, and real people are complex. Gold is not as heavy as Little Bee, but even in Little Bee there was a ray of hope. I appreciate that about these books, and I highly recommend them to individuals and book clubs.
Interested in reading Gold with your book club or exploring the themes? Check out these book club discussion questions on Gold.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.