The book was chosen for several reasons: firstly, a long
time had passed since the club had read a book that placed itself in the ‘ghost
story’ category (if indeed we ever have); Michelle Paver is familiar to a
couple of us through reading her well-received ‘Wolf Brother’ series with our
children a few years ago; and as quite a short book it could be a not unwelcome lollipop
contrast to the recent run of fairly lengthy tomes.
To cut to the chase, there was general agreement that the book didn’t really
match up to the 'ghost story' billing. It wasn’t without its qualities and most of us found
something to like, but overall there was a distinct lack of, um, ghostliness.
Jack, the protagonist, is followed through the story largely
by means of his own diary. He joins an expedition to spend a winter in the
Arctic on a remote part of Svalbard (Spitzbergen). He doesn’t really fit with
the public school background of his expedition mates but they need a radio
operator and decides to go anyway as it fits with his own (so far thwarted) greater
ambitions. On his way back to his digs after the interview, he witnesses the rotting corpse of a
drowning victim being recovered from the Thames…
Months later, and already a man down, the ship carrying them
north nears Spitzbergen and it becomes clear that the experienced, quite possibly grizzled
skipper is reluctant to transport the expedition to the exact location that
they originally planned – but why…?
We liked:
Effective, sometimes dramatic descriptions of the location, weather and and
scenery; the ice ‘talking to itself’; the loneliness enhanced by the weather,
the effects of the increasing cold and shortening daylight. The rigmaroles
involved in setting up the radio and the details of the paraphernalia (such as an Austin
car engine used as a generator) involved in establishing polar expeditions of the 1930s. There was atmospheric build-up in the
description of the mysterious ‘bear post’ outside the hut and the description
of bay and what had been left behind by the previous inhabitants. The employment
of distraction therapy to reduce Jack’s feelings of fear; the panicking description
of getting lost. We all found it an easy enough read and one of us was even prepared
to admit that it kept him reading later into the night than usual.
We didn’t like:
The curt and over-dramatic language used at the start of
almost every chapter (‘It’s all over, I’m not going’… ‘Jack what the hell are
you doing? What the hell are you doing?’…‘I’m still troubled by what happened,
so I’m going to try to get it straight’…‘Now I really know I’m in the Arctic’…)
- much more suited in style to a book for young teenagers but to grizzled
adults it became tedious quite quickly. So it was hard to buy into this as an adult book. The diary format wasn’t entirely plausible, as his entries would
be surely be more technical and less emotional. Some of the plot required too
great a suspension of disbelief – setting the hut on fire and then being
rescued; the relationship with Gus and the rather ‘corny, trashy’ passages
addressed by Jack to him. The ‘contrived’ nature of the plot development (such
as the one-by-one picking off of his expedition-mates by circumstances rather
than nefarious means) meant that the further we went into the book the
less we really cared. And for more than one of us there was a blatantly missed opportunity for some fine polar-bear-based jeopardy.
What we thought:
A horror film creates its suspense through the ability to totally immerse its audience in the narrative and visual aspects of the story. In this screen-dominated era, it’s a
harder accomplishment to pull off in a book, and on the whole we didn’t feel
that Dark Matter managed it. One of us felt it was ‘scary at times’ but others
weren’t so sure. There was a fairly engaging setup but the leaps we
had to make to buy into the climax of the book were too great. Henry James’
‘The Turn of the Screw’ was mentioned as an excellent example of a well-written
story that effectively creates suspense. In terms of describing the trials and
hardships of early 20th Century polar exploration, the account of
Shackleton’s expedition read by the club a few years ago was cited as a better
stab (though I’m not sure all of us would entirely agree with that!).
Essentially we felt it was more of a teenager’s book than we
were expecting, easily consumed but a bit disappointingly insubstantial as a
result, and while it had potential it wasn’t on the whole lived up to.
One score still to come in but otherwise a very consistent
set of scores between 5 and 7. Average 5.5.
