We Begin Our Ascent by Joe Mungo Reed

Simon & Schuster, 256 pages, $26

This is not a mystery.

Are you a fan of the Tour de France? If you do not know what the Tour is, then perhaps you might acquaint yourself with a brief description before reading this book. I suppose it’s possible to read this book without knowing. But then the question doesn’t become what the author wants the question to be. It becomes, instead, why would anyone do that? Actually, that is one of the questions, but it should come from a different place.

Solomon rides as the domestique for Fabrice in a cycling team sponsored by a chicken parts company. It’s not a humorous book, but there are a few times when Joe Mungo Reed inserts a wry observation or dialogue. Fabrice is the star and he is the one upon whose hopes the chicken parts lie. Solomon and Tsutomo are the riders who are there to enable Fabrice’s win. He drafts behind them. They fetch water and nutritional gels for him.

The riders must give their all to the sport. They must live the sport, eat for the sport, sleep for the sport. The fact that Solomon has a wife and baby is an anomaly. But he, too, is pledged to cycling as a quest, as a religion. As such, there are some heavy questions in the book.

Why does Solomon ride? What does it satisfy in him? Is it caprice? Vanity? A habit? The money? The whole book is devoted to what makes Solomon ride. I found the book thoughtful and sad. Apparently author Reed is not himself a competitive cyclist, but he appears to have captured the anxiety of the sport.

Does Solomon find the answers to his questions? Well, the title of the book is "We Begin Our Ascent."