Yesterday I started reading Michelle Paver's Dark Matter, which I think is going to be a quick, entertaining and atmospheric read. I've read a number of very positive reviews of the book, many of them calling this a chilling story--no pun intended as it is set in the Arctic Circle! I think in this modern day it is hard to write a convincingly scary book/ghost story, though maybe reading it in the right circumstances (alone in a dark room, save for one lamp, and rain pelting against the windows would be good) would help. Strangely I get in my most uninterrupted reading time each day at the gym, so that's where I'm working on it. I'm not sure how scary it will feel in a well-lit room filled with people exercising, but you never know. Maybe I'll save the last bit to read at home just before bedtime. But then do I really want to scare myself?
The story is set in 1937 when a group of five men set out on a scientific expedition to the Arctic. They've specifically chosen an island called Gruhuken, where they will spend the next year tracking various natural phenomenon. Right from the start, however, things go wrong, and the reader knows from the first page that at least one man will die and one will be crippled. One man ends up overwintering there alone. Bad things have happened at Gruhuken, though the reader is only teased and not told what--that's what I'll soon find out.
The story is written in diary format, and my teaser is from an entry made from the first impression of the Arctic when the men have just arrived.
"Hugo, the keen glaciologist, asked Mr Eriksson to head into the fjord to get nearer the glacier, and we craned our necks at fissured walls of ice and caverns of mysterious blue. From deep within came weird creaks and groans, as if a giant were hammering to get out. Then a noise like a rifle shot, and a huge segment of ice crashed into the sea, sending up spouts of water, and a wave that rocked the ship. Shattered ice turned the sea a milky pale-green. The hammering went on. Now I know why people used to believe Spitsbergen was haunted."
"But as we headed north up the coast, I realised that despite my reading, I'd made the classic mistake of imagining the Arctic as an empty waste. I'd thought that since it's too far north for trees, there wouldn't be much else except rocks. Maybe a few seals and seabirds, but nothing like this. I never expected so much life."
"Great flocks of gulls perching on icebergs, rising in flurries, diving after fish. An Arctic fox trotting over a green plain with a puffin flapping its jaws. Reindeer raising antlered heads to watch us pass. Walruses rocking on the waves; one surfaced right beneath me with an explosive, spraying huff! and regarded me with a phlegmatic brown eye. The sleek heads of seals bobbed on the surface, observing us with the same curiosity with which we observed them."
I love the descriptions, though I like less the descriptions of the killing of animals. This isn't the first book I've read with an Arctic setting, so I know it is par for the course--particularly considering the time period it is set but those parts make for uncomfortable reading. More on this one later.