MOUNTAIN LOG BOOKS 116 ESSAYS AND SHORT STORIES FROM A WELL-KNOWN IRISH CLIMBER Cara Scullion Uncommon Ground: Adventures with Outsiders in Remarkable Terrain By Dermot Somers Choice Publishing Book Store (2024), 212pp (ppbk), €13.99 + p&p from Choice Publishing & Book Services Ltd, Drogheda, Co Louth, [email protected], 041 984 1551, 089 600 1995 Last year’s Lynam Award recipient Dermot Somers is a seasoned and skilled mountaineer. Awarded for his contribution to mountaineering, Dermot is also an accomplished writer and is well versed in broadcasting media. Dermot has eight published books, and in 1994 won the Boardman Tasker Award for his contribution to mountain literature; he has also won an award for his literature in Irish. Dermot’s most recent book, Uncommon Ground: Adventures with Outsiders in Remarkable Terrain, is a mosaic of his dramatic accounts, essays and short fiction. Uncommon Ground tackles not only the physical, but the psychological, societal and political aspects that arise when mountaineering. Dermot writes with a heightened focus on the nature of people. Despite the colossal scale of his expeditions, humans are at the heart of his narratives. The ‘common ground’ wordplay in his title are the shared interests that are found by the people he encounters. It is clear in Somers’ dramatic accounts who the ‘outsiders’ in the title are – often isolated due to the nature of the terrain and as an outsider to the cultures that embraced him. Uncommon Ground is a book of 212 pages, composed of fragmented parts. It contains six dramatic accounts, ten coloured images, five essays and eight short stories. The ‘Uncommon Ground’ in the title describes the breakthroughs made by Dermot in mountaineering. He recounts his erratic, exceptional expeditions and lived experiences. His travel journals
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