Today’s Countdown to Hallowe’en review is a creepy ghost story based around an expedition to the North Pole – you have been warned! Over to Randy…
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I don’t think we will ever learn the truth of what happened at Gruhauken. However I know enough to be convinced that something terrible took place. And whatever it was, Dr. Murchison, it was real. It was not the result of some phobic disorder.
— Algernon Carlyle
The stories they tell of that time! Marauding bears. Lethal accidents on the ice. Men going mad from the dark and the loneliness, murdering each other, shooting themselves.
There’s even a name for it. They call it rar.
— Jack Miller
In 1937 four British university men create an expedition to gauge weather conditions at Gruhuken, near the North Pole. They need someone to man the wireless, to send reports of their work to the authorities, also to keep the newspapers up to date on their doings. This is the lucky stroke our narrator, Jack, has been waiting for. Unable to raise the money to go to one of the better universities for physics, as he had planned, he consequently acquired a job as a clerk. This would be his great adventure, his chance to redirect his life’s trajectory.
Almost immediately the expedition runs into trouble when Teddy, their photographer and medic, loses his father. Family duties mean he must withdraw from the expedition, so the five-man team becomes four.
Their plans go further awry when they pick a particularly inhospitable camp site, a former mine with a bad reputation. There is a pole here in front of the remnant of a cabin; a pole from which dead bears hung to dry, to discourage the curiosity of other bears. The pole marks a spot that makes Jack uneasy, but the men are determined and they build their own cabin and keep the pole. And then they wait for winter.
The characters are sketched in nicely, especially Jack, who isn’t entirely likable, but is certainly relatable. Without beating us over the head with it, Paver uses the tension of class differences to supply the motivation and perspective that guides the characters’ decision-making: This chance at a new life for Jack, to escape his clerical job, to have an adventure, means he cannot allow anything to disrupt or abort the mission. He owes it to his future and he also feels he owes it to the team leader, Gus. He has a feeling about Gus, an allegiance he doesn’t feel comfortable naming, and that contributes to his determination.
Subtitled “A Ghost Story”, this novel is a solid addition to the genre, with enough of the setting’s history unveiled to make the haunting understandable. Jack, meanwhile, is conflicted both on a social and a personal level in plausible ways that explain his behavior and heighten the tension, while making him vulnerable. Further, the loneliness and vastness of the Arctic and the weight of lightlessness are well-depicted, serving to create and foster anxiety that would erode one’s well-being when isolated for months on end. While the climax isn’t entirely satisfying, Paver rounds her tale off well. For anyone craving a ghost story, in particular a historical ghost story, and/or a horror novel in the frigid north this novel should please.
DARK MATTER by Michelle Paver
Orion Books, 2010
256 pages
ISBN: 978-1409123781
Review by Randy Money
