The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean
We listened to this on CD during our holiday in France recently. We were mesmerized initially but the tale of misadventure and extreme polar suffering did pall eventually.
Splendid description of Antarctica. I met Geraldine McCaughrean at a Writers in Oxford/Society of Authors party in Oxford a couple of months ago, and asked her if she had been to Antarctica. “No,” she said, laughing and shaking her head, as if the suggestion were ridiculous.
That’s encouraging to me–that one can write such a vivid novel, based on research and imagination.
She is evidently steeped in the literature of polar exploration –Scott, Shackleton, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, Amundsen, Mawson. (Incidentally, all these five authors have been republished by the publishing company my husband and I own, Benediction Classics). I loved the seamless way she links this zany, doomed expedition with those of Scott, Cherry-Garrard, Amundsen and Shackleton. I particularly loved Shackleton’s quote in a letter to his wife when he turned back 97 miles from the Pole, “I thought you would rather have a live donkey than a dead lion!!”
All in all, a gripping thrilling young adult novel
Read my new memoir: Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India (US) or UK.
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My book of essays: Wandering Between Two Worlds (US) or UK
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Proverbs 1, 1-6, Day 2. Jan 2nd
Images of my Oxford Garden in May 2013 ( and my tame rabbits!)
An Autobiography in Blog Posts I. Childhood, Boarding School, a Novice at Mother Teresa’s Convent!
Writing in the Cold by Ted Solotaroff, a Brilliant Essay on the Psychology of Writing
Too Busy for Happiness. The Saddest Parable Jesus Told.
Lorna, I own a small publishing company, Benediction Classics, 4 years old, and one of the first books we republished in hardback was The Worst Journey in the World. I love the way the book begins
"Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised. It is the only form of adventure in which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, findthem as clean as though they were new. It is more lonely than London,more secluded than any monastery, and the post comes but once a year. As men will compare the hardships of France, Palestine, or Mesopotamia, so it would be interesting to contrast the rival claims of the Antarctic asa medium of discomfort. A member of Campbell's party tells me that thetrenches at Ypres were a comparative picnic. But until somebody canevolve a standard of endurance I am unable to see how it can be done.Take it, all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin."
I was so interested in your self-publishing post. I think people would write far far more if they wrote for their own internal editor, got it professionally edited, and then self-published it. Writers' block wouldn't be such a problem. I am happy to see an increasing number of established authors going down the self-publishing route!
I read this book a couple of years ago and absolutely loved it. I thought the voice was excellent and am also a sucker for descriptions of Arctic/Antarctic environments I will never visit – years ago read Apsley Cherry-Garrard's 'The Worst Journey in the World' – brilliant title!