The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 17 November 2015
by Rebecca Hunt
Perhaps it is a better idea, if you're going to read a book set in Antarctica, to read it during the summer months. It doesn't take much description of the piercing cold of the place to send a chill through the veins of the reader. Rebecca Hunt's adventure novel is no exception. Antarctica has long been considered the last frontier on Earth. There have been many expeditions to its margins, and across its frozen surface. Its history is a storied collection of adventures both triumphant and grimly tragic. Today, of course, Antarctica is better understood by far. Humans occupy bases around the frozen continent and at the South Pole itself all year long. Antarctica tells us its story of Earth's climate history, and of its future. The ice on the continent, along with that of Greenland, represents the largest frozen reservoir of fresh water on land, and as such, a vast source for sea level rise as our climate continues to change. Still, the place is fierce and unforgiving. There are no breaks from the polar climate should you become trapped out in its weather or its darkness.
As an artist in residence upon a voyage to Antarctica, Rebecca Hunt sampled, first-hand, the environment and the culture of the continent. What has resulted is this two-tiered adventure. Mining the history of Antarctic exploration, we have one story of three men sent to the unexplored island of Everland in 1913, as part of a larger expedition. Disaster strikes almost immediately, and their trip becomes one of survival against fierce odds. And, from the contemporary culture of Antarctic science, Hunt gives us a centennial trip to Everland in 2012, with three people visiting the island to study its populations of fur seals and Adelie penguins. These folks, though, are less explorers than scientists, well supported by modern technology from a nearby permanent base on the mainland. Still, even with that proximity, Antarctica's unforgiving climate can make a science excursion turn into a desperate struggle to survive.
These parallel expeditions make up Hunt's story. Her short energetic chapters keep the mood from being too relentlessly cold and overwhelming. She explores the nature of these explorers, from the men, a century ago, who wish to make their mark on the world of discovery, to the men and women of today who seek a transformative experience, and to make their own incremental contribution to environmental science. The book is very much about the people, how the forbidding environment changes them, and how those who survive are the ones who get to tell the tale. Indeed, how it really happened becomes all a matter of conjecture. The great stories of Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole in 1914 have lately been tempered by a modern analysis of his poor choices and failures of planning. The doomed adventurers of 1913 in Hunt's book face a similar fate. And those of today, echoing their emotional and geographical journey, also face the shifting nature of memory, and the perspectives of those who get to write the histories. The book is powerful and engaging; a fitting addition to the literature of Antarctica. Recommended.
See also:
[The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard]
[Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson]
[The Compass Rose by Ursula K. LeGuin]