دانلود کتاب Crux 2026

Gabriel Tallent’s second novel, Crux, follows two seventeen-year-old best friends, Dan and Tamma, as they navigate their final year of high school in the southern Mojave Desert. United by their intense passion for rock climbing, the pair escape their difficult home lives by spending their nights and weekends scaling boulders and dreaming of a future as professional “dirtbag” climbers in the Utah canyonlands.

However, their ambitions are threatened by the pressures of impending adulthood, including family obligations, financial instability, and the weight of societal expectations. As Dan’s mother, a once-famous novelist, falls ill and Tamma steps up to care for her sister’s children, the friends are pulled in different directions, forcing them to confront the crux of their lives—the most difficult and consequential decisions about who they want to become.

In Crux, Gabriel Tallent masterfully uses the sport of climbing as a powerful metaphor for the risky, high-stakes choices of adolescence. The novel is rich with the specific lingo and visceral physicality of climbing, immersing the reader in the world Dan and Tamma inhabit. Tallent contrasts the quiet, introspective Dan with the loud, fiercely loyal, and foul-mouthed Tamma, creating a dynamic and deeply authentic friendship at the story’s heart.

Through their parallel struggles, the book explores timeless themes of class, ambition, and the search for meaning, questioning the conventional American narrative that chasing one’s dreams guarantees a happy ending. Tallent portrays the beauty and brutality of the desert landscape with a keen eye, grounding the teenagers’ internal dramas in a vivid and unforgiving natural world¹.