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Ice Diaries: An Antarctic Memoir
What do we stand to lose in a world without ice?
A decade ago, novelist and short story writer Jean McNeil spent a year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world’s most enigmatic continent — Antarctica. Access to the Antarctic remains largely reserved for scientists, and it is the only piece of earth that is nobody’s country. Ice Diaries is the story of McNeil’s years spent in ice, not only in the Antarctic but her subsequent travels to Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard, culminating in a strange event in Cape Town, South Africa, where she journeyed to make what was to be her final trip to the southernmost continent.
In the spirit of the diaries of Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, McNeil mixes travelogue, popular science, and memoir to examine the history of our fascination with ice. In entering this world, McNeil unexpectedly finds herself confronting her own upbringing in the Maritimes, the lifelong effects of growing up in a cold place, and how the climates of childhood frame our emotional thermodynamics for life. Ice Diaries is a haunting story of the relationship between beauty and terror, loss and abandonment, transformation and triumph.
A decade ago, novelist and short story writer Jean McNeil spent a year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world’s most enigmatic continent — Antarctica. Access to the Antarctic remains largely reserved for scientists, and it is the only piece of earth that is nobody’s country. Ice Diaries is the story of McNeil’s years spent in ice, not only in the Antarctic but her subsequent travels to Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard, culminating in a strange event in Cape Town, South Africa, where she journeyed to make what was to be her final trip to the southernmost continent.
In the spirit of the diaries of Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, McNeil mixes travelogue, popular science, and memoir to examine the history of our fascination with ice. In entering this world, McNeil unexpectedly finds herself confronting her own upbringing in the Maritimes, the lifelong effects of growing up in a cold place, and how the climates of childhood frame our emotional thermodynamics for life. Ice Diaries is a haunting story of the relationship between beauty and terror, loss and abandonment, transformation and triumph.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published March 15, 2016
25 people are currently reading
1262 people want to read
About the author
Jean McNeil
22 books68 followersJean McNeil is the author of ten books including four novels and a collection of short fiction. Her work has been short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Journey Prize, and she has won the Prism International prize for short fiction and subsequently for narrative non-fiction. She is the co-director of the Masters in Prose Fiction at the University of East Anglia and lives in London, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
February 8, 2016
I just love these meditative types of books and lately I have been attracted to books set in Alaska, the Arctic and the Antarctic. Such different places that are hard for me to imagine. Enjoyed that each chapter started with a description of a different type of ice, who knew there were so many. Also liked the clear and concise description of the differences between the Arctic and the Antarctic.
The author meets so many interesting people, experiences so many different things, things that make her ponder events and people in her own life. Took me to a place I will never visit except in books like these.
ARC from Netgalley.
The author meets so many interesting people, experiences so many different things, things that make her ponder events and people in her own life. Took me to a place I will never visit except in books like these.
ARC from Netgalley.
February 6, 2016
This book has everything I can ask for when I read a work of what I like to call creative non-fiction - she interweaves her own experiences (past and present) with conversations with people within those experiences and multifaceted research. The writing is vivid and brings me into her world of ice and cold. The way she captures isolation, the effect a landscape has on a person, the thoughts that go through your head when you are trapped at the bottom of the world - it is very powerful. If it were not an advanced reader copy I'd be adding a bunch of quotes to this review to show what I mean.
I received a review copy of this from the publisher with a very short window, so I had to move it above other books. But I will be sad to see it expire. This is a definite purchase for my cold-weather-island shelf at home, one I think I would dip into again to read about the cold. Perhaps it can replace Anna Karenina as my summer antidote book!
I received a review copy of this from the publisher with a very short window, so I had to move it above other books. But I will be sad to see it expire. This is a definite purchase for my cold-weather-island shelf at home, one I think I would dip into again to read about the cold. Perhaps it can replace Anna Karenina as my summer antidote book!
August 14, 2019
You can feel it as you approach. Its presence is like that of nowhere else on Earth. The monumental self-absorption of the landmass acts like a cold vortex, pulling you in. But the allure of its independence, its lack of need, is so attractive. The Antarctic lives outside our narrative, like an extra planet moored at the bottom of the ocean. It does not belong to us. .....I will never come this way again.
This book pulled me in like a vortex. The combination of the author’s memoir of her childhood interspersed with her journey to and stay in the Antarctic works brilliantly and is mesmerising. I found her personal journey just as interesting as her description of life in the Antarctic and the people she met there. It’s perhaps a little bit self indulgent sometimes but what memoir isn’t? She describes the changing light and colour in the Antarctic at different times of the year and I could see its beauty in my mind’s eye. I found her ability to describe the landscape and the emotions it wrung from her very powerful.
An easy 5 stars from me. If you’re as fascinated by the Antarctic as I am, this is an excellent read.
August 30, 2018
2,5. Za dużo autorki, za dużo niedomówień, za dużo histerii i paniki. Za mało lodu.
March 20, 2016
I found this a difficult book to evaluate. It is based on the author's 4 month stay In Antarctica ten years ago. She displays great poetic/literary talent in vivid descriptions of dazzling, changing colours on gleaming ice fields and ice bergs.
I thought the book uneven and choppy in the transition of time, place and inner thoughts. There was some straightforward description of her time aboard ship and at the base, descriptions of the science of global warming she learned on her journey, and warnings of the danger this portends for the future. There is much introspection with memories of a drunken and violent family surroundings and impoverished life in Cape Breton. Later in what sounds like the Miramichi region she describes a killer stalking young women and encounters with her mysterious biological father. These passages are unclear and fragmented like a dream.
The author describes herself as introverted and a loner. The narrative is full of melancholy. She feels, as writer in residence that she is out of place amongst scientists and the people are either younger and older than herself. She does build temporary friendships with a younger scientist who explains the science of ice, and an older pilot who teaches her to fly his plane. When these men leave the base she is depressed and subject to anxiety attacks.
There are some hints of the supernatural. A fortune teller predicted before she planned her journey that she envisioned her among ice in a cold country. On her way to a second stay in Antarctica she suddenly abandons the project due to strong premonitions that her life is in danger.
I would have preferred more description of the life and base and the workers there. I think most of the introspection and life story would make another book.
I thought the book uneven and choppy in the transition of time, place and inner thoughts. There was some straightforward description of her time aboard ship and at the base, descriptions of the science of global warming she learned on her journey, and warnings of the danger this portends for the future. There is much introspection with memories of a drunken and violent family surroundings and impoverished life in Cape Breton. Later in what sounds like the Miramichi region she describes a killer stalking young women and encounters with her mysterious biological father. These passages are unclear and fragmented like a dream.
The author describes herself as introverted and a loner. The narrative is full of melancholy. She feels, as writer in residence that she is out of place amongst scientists and the people are either younger and older than herself. She does build temporary friendships with a younger scientist who explains the science of ice, and an older pilot who teaches her to fly his plane. When these men leave the base she is depressed and subject to anxiety attacks.
There are some hints of the supernatural. A fortune teller predicted before she planned her journey that she envisioned her among ice in a cold country. On her way to a second stay in Antarctica she suddenly abandons the project due to strong premonitions that her life is in danger.
I would have preferred more description of the life and base and the workers there. I think most of the introspection and life story would make another book.
February 18, 2021
A disappointing conglomeration. The text oscillates between Antarctica and the author's childhood in coyly unnamed Canadian locales. I resented having to piece together clues and guess the Canadian locations. The Canadian sequences should have been interesting, but the lack of specificity and lack of relevance to Antarctica made them eventually unreadable. I started to skip them and once that happens a book is essentially doomed. Much of the Antarctica descriptions are beautifully done, but this book as a whole just did not come together for me.
March 13, 2022
This book requires a good deal of patience with the writer as she navigates her personal journey of the soul — the Antarctic being but a stopping point, albeit a defining one. Some have aptly described it as “creative non-fiction”.
The primal story of Antarctica had long since been written by Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen in the process of what they did, and retold by others. What remains for those following on, such as Jean McNeil, is to address our human response to that alien world and what one’s exposure to its mysteries does to a person. To be sure, there is a common theme to that reaction: isolation, darkness, extreme cold, disorientation. But then, each person experiencing it is left to consider their own psychic path through that ice-bound realm. McNeil does so by means of a sort of diary, interleaved with recollections of a disjointed and troubled personal life. I often became impatient with her abrupt changes in time, leaping backward and forward over decades; and while her exploration of her anxiety attacks were grittily convincing, they didn’t make for enjoyable reading.
I think that the most defining passage is where she writes “The Antarctic was an attempt to resolve inner conflicts in my existence. I would not return to Canada to do it; it was safer to enact it far away, under an upside-down heaven, in a frozen foreign colony. How appropriate that I would go to that continent at the bottom of the planet, that place onto which we project our dark fantasies, as much as our utopias.”
In reading “Ice Diaries” one learns almost nothing new about Antarctica while learning much about Jean McNeil, especially about her emotional challenges. Despite all of that, I was still left with a sense that I never really came to understand her as a whole person. So, as a memoir, I don’t think it is truly a success.
The primal story of Antarctica had long since been written by Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen in the process of what they did, and retold by others. What remains for those following on, such as Jean McNeil, is to address our human response to that alien world and what one’s exposure to its mysteries does to a person. To be sure, there is a common theme to that reaction: isolation, darkness, extreme cold, disorientation. But then, each person experiencing it is left to consider their own psychic path through that ice-bound realm. McNeil does so by means of a sort of diary, interleaved with recollections of a disjointed and troubled personal life. I often became impatient with her abrupt changes in time, leaping backward and forward over decades; and while her exploration of her anxiety attacks were grittily convincing, they didn’t make for enjoyable reading.
I think that the most defining passage is where she writes “The Antarctic was an attempt to resolve inner conflicts in my existence. I would not return to Canada to do it; it was safer to enact it far away, under an upside-down heaven, in a frozen foreign colony. How appropriate that I would go to that continent at the bottom of the planet, that place onto which we project our dark fantasies, as much as our utopias.”
In reading “Ice Diaries” one learns almost nothing new about Antarctica while learning much about Jean McNeil, especially about her emotional challenges. Despite all of that, I was still left with a sense that I never really came to understand her as a whole person. So, as a memoir, I don’t think it is truly a success.
July 8, 2016
“The trick about Antarctica is knowing when to leave ...”
I’ve long been fascinated by the thought of visiting Antarctica, and in the absence of any possibility of visiting, at present, I have instead devoured books by those who have visited and lived on this vast icy continent. This book is easily one of the most memorable and evocative I have read – both a travel story as well as a personal memoir. Moving from her past growing up in Canada, to time spent in Antarctica as year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, Antarctic, Jean McNeil. It is about coming to terms and processing that past, as well as some of the changes that can occur in you the longer you spend in Antarctica, and McNeil unflinchingly describes her depression as darkness sets in before an Antarctic winter. But time is also running out as global warming heats up the earth, and this book is both a warning of environmental damage, as well as homage to that strange continent. The language is achingly beautiful, a meditative book to be savoured and returned to.
“Some places do stay behind you. But others refuse to assume their rightful place on the linear timeline. These form islands in the river of time and in memory, persistent and opaque. There live people and events that happen over and over again, spiralling out beyond that which can be described as already experienced and so known; something about them is being worked on a timescale far grander than the moment, or our individual lives. They are the past, but the future also.”
“The Antarctic is an addition, they say... The world will never look the same again, they say. By venturing into that vortex and the beguiling frozen underworld, even once, you risk becoming part of the strange fraternity of people obsessed with a void continent moored at the bottom of the world.”
I’ve long been fascinated by the thought of visiting Antarctica, and in the absence of any possibility of visiting, at present, I have instead devoured books by those who have visited and lived on this vast icy continent. This book is easily one of the most memorable and evocative I have read – both a travel story as well as a personal memoir. Moving from her past growing up in Canada, to time spent in Antarctica as year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, Antarctic, Jean McNeil. It is about coming to terms and processing that past, as well as some of the changes that can occur in you the longer you spend in Antarctica, and McNeil unflinchingly describes her depression as darkness sets in before an Antarctic winter. But time is also running out as global warming heats up the earth, and this book is both a warning of environmental damage, as well as homage to that strange continent. The language is achingly beautiful, a meditative book to be savoured and returned to.
“Some places do stay behind you. But others refuse to assume their rightful place on the linear timeline. These form islands in the river of time and in memory, persistent and opaque. There live people and events that happen over and over again, spiralling out beyond that which can be described as already experienced and so known; something about them is being worked on a timescale far grander than the moment, or our individual lives. They are the past, but the future also.”
“The Antarctic is an addition, they say... The world will never look the same again, they say. By venturing into that vortex and the beguiling frozen underworld, even once, you risk becoming part of the strange fraternity of people obsessed with a void continent moored at the bottom of the world.”
December 20, 2019
The journey by ship into Antarctica became an unerringly apt metaphor for my experience of reading the book.
Initially it was exhilarating, opening windows into linguistic and literal vistas I could hardly imagine. The denseness of the writing and the author's self-professed tendency to "over-write" made reading slow but rewarding...
...until I realised that was the only gear she had. There was no let-up, no change of pace, if anything just an increasingly introspective narration with observations that turned into marathon cud-chewing exercises.
Eventually the journey on the ship of this book encountered a loose ice floe and I got through to the other side not because I particularly wanted to get to the other side, nor because the journey was still invigorating, but because I felt having gone that far it would be rude not to.
Interspersed throughout are episodes from the author's youth, which seemed moderately engaging but didn't to me serve any useful purpose in the book as a whole except to make this ostensible fiction seem slightly more about the author and slightly less about the world/Antarctica/people.
McNeil seems entirely happy to over-think and articulate that excess on paper. I wish she wouldn't, because there are enough human and natural world observations and cogitations that I would want to read more of her, if only she wasn't so set on making it hard work.
Initially it was exhilarating, opening windows into linguistic and literal vistas I could hardly imagine. The denseness of the writing and the author's self-professed tendency to "over-write" made reading slow but rewarding...
...until I realised that was the only gear she had. There was no let-up, no change of pace, if anything just an increasingly introspective narration with observations that turned into marathon cud-chewing exercises.
Eventually the journey on the ship of this book encountered a loose ice floe and I got through to the other side not because I particularly wanted to get to the other side, nor because the journey was still invigorating, but because I felt having gone that far it would be rude not to.
Interspersed throughout are episodes from the author's youth, which seemed moderately engaging but didn't to me serve any useful purpose in the book as a whole except to make this ostensible fiction seem slightly more about the author and slightly less about the world/Antarctica/people.
McNeil seems entirely happy to over-think and articulate that excess on paper. I wish she wouldn't, because there are enough human and natural world observations and cogitations that I would want to read more of her, if only she wasn't so set on making it hard work.
dnf
October 4, 2022dnf @ 19% due to casual racism
October 23, 2016
I am an experienced Antarctic veteran. This is a memoir of an Antarctic experience by a newcomer. It is crammed full of rich prose. In the spirit of Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, McNeil withholds no secrets. This kept me reading. Her descriptions of the landscape are unique and unexpected, like the Antarctic. Many times I read them and said "yeah, that’s how it is," or, "I’d never thought of it that way." She devotes a good portion of book to revealing the characters she became close to. They are convincing in their own uniqueness. In a parallel story she shows the turmoil of her pubescent youth, and how she escaped it. Although compelling, I didn’t quite get the reason for this structure. It does show her strong character though, and makes you root for her. In the end she is telling the reader how the Antarctic changed her. Anyone who has been there under similar circumstances knows they’ve been changed, but most are not sure how. Her book joins the ranks of others that recounted visits to Antarctica by observers – not scientists and technical staff. I’m comparing this book to Antarctica by Gabrielle Walker, and Terra Incognita by Sara Wheeler. Wheeler’s is the best, but McNeil ties with Walker. All these books reveal a place where nobody belongs and from where no one really leaves.
January 28, 2018
It took me some time to settle into this memoir/musing centred around the author's time as a writer-in-residence on a base in British Antarctica - it's slow-paced and contemplative (and somewhat too wordy) looping round and round the author's attempts to come to grips with the environment, its effect on her, and her eliptical interactions with others around her. But once settled, I found it absorbing and thought-provoking. Extraordinary place and well worth asking what it means to us. 3.5.
December 28, 2017
I got irritated by this book and this author. I couldn't follow her timeline getting to the Antarctic and couldn't follow the story from her past. I didn't particularly like her, or maybe it was that I just couldn't get to know her. She wrote about her crippling anxiety, but so dispassionately that it was dull. I also couldn't buy into the whole "I have a gift for predicting the future". I missed the point of that. I hope she's a better fiction writer than non-fiction writer.
March 29, 2021
Jean McNeil had the unusual distinction of being selected to be a non-scientific “summerer” in the British Antarctic as a writer in residence. She used the experience to explore her inner conflicts and humanity’s conflict with climate change. In leaving civilized life behind and willingly entering into the Antarctic’s charisma, exposed to its lethality, we can know who we are. What it means to be human. Whether we are human. Whether we can survive on a planet we’re destroying. What we are destroying. I feared it might be a polemic, but it was more of a musing, which I appreciated (I KNOW!! MY SELFISH HABITS MAKE CLIMATE CHANGE WORSE!!).
The restrictions required in traveling “South” - staying on the Falkland Islands, spending weeks on a ship and months at the base, with only short adventures outside - reminded me of our constricted activities and lack of spontaneity in COVID-19: It wasn’t about only our physical confinement, or the fact that there was no only one way out, but that every day was mapped before it began. The predictability of who she would see, sit with, talk to, eat, and the amount of planning undertaken before leaving the base reminded me of the grind of endless work Zooms and grocery shopping expeditions in 2020.
In some ways, it’s a book about writing a book, in that she’s constantly being asked and considering how to approach her open-ended assignment. She ends up cutting back and forth between a type of “witness statement” about the planet, a travel narrative of her journey and companions, and a memoir of surviving a difficult childhood in a cold place (nonspecifically, one of the Canadian Maritimes). She had associated the cold with her profoundly negative family experience, which disconnected her from relationships in general; whereas the collective endeavor and forced unbroken togetherness of traveling to an uninhabitable place connected her to a global fraternity.
As she learns from the scientists around her of the necessary and life-preserving impacts of Antarctica's cold on the habitability of the planet, she sees that the only real option is for humans to adjust, change what we can, and set new expectations for how we live. The critical mistakes made by polar explorers is much discussed at the base; Shackleton is famously quoted following the failure of his expedition to the South Pole: “A man must shape himself to new mark directly the old one goes to ground.” The emission-cutting 'mark' humanity sets after creating climate change will ultimately determine how much of our planet becomes as uninhabitable as the seventh continent.
The restrictions required in traveling “South” - staying on the Falkland Islands, spending weeks on a ship and months at the base, with only short adventures outside - reminded me of our constricted activities and lack of spontaneity in COVID-19: It wasn’t about only our physical confinement, or the fact that there was no only one way out, but that every day was mapped before it began. The predictability of who she would see, sit with, talk to, eat, and the amount of planning undertaken before leaving the base reminded me of the grind of endless work Zooms and grocery shopping expeditions in 2020.
In some ways, it’s a book about writing a book, in that she’s constantly being asked and considering how to approach her open-ended assignment. She ends up cutting back and forth between a type of “witness statement” about the planet, a travel narrative of her journey and companions, and a memoir of surviving a difficult childhood in a cold place (nonspecifically, one of the Canadian Maritimes). She had associated the cold with her profoundly negative family experience, which disconnected her from relationships in general; whereas the collective endeavor and forced unbroken togetherness of traveling to an uninhabitable place connected her to a global fraternity.
As she learns from the scientists around her of the necessary and life-preserving impacts of Antarctica's cold on the habitability of the planet, she sees that the only real option is for humans to adjust, change what we can, and set new expectations for how we live. The critical mistakes made by polar explorers is much discussed at the base; Shackleton is famously quoted following the failure of his expedition to the South Pole: “A man must shape himself to new mark directly the old one goes to ground.” The emission-cutting 'mark' humanity sets after creating climate change will ultimately determine how much of our planet becomes as uninhabitable as the seventh continent.
March 21, 2018
Reading through the list of Banff Book Festival Winners, this one was tough for me to get to and to finish. The beginning was confusing, because I wasn't aware that she had had the opportunity to go twice! I have always wanted to go to the Antarctic, especially on a research ship on someone else's dollar. I would happily take a science (I have a chemistry degree) or writer position. If only Canada bought the station that the Ukraine got. As a consolation prize I spend a fair amount of time in the Yukon.
The book felt like it needed another edit to harmonize the past and present. Spending time in the north has always been particularly healing for me, so I can appreciate her self reflection on a painful past within the context of her isolation, but it wasn't well integrated for the reader. Loki was a weird, rushed addition with little connection to the rest of the story. I realize that he reflected what she saw in her father, but the relationship or lack thereof needed more exposition or to be cut out entirely. On the other hand by knowing the challenges she faced as a child, I could understand how she acquired the skills to secure TWO highly competitive spots to the Antarctic. I just wished it flowed better.
At the Banff festival they talked about her ice climbing experience that started in the Antarctic, which I patiently kept reading until I found it towards the end, though she had mentioned the training when they reached. I enjoyed her accounts of the young explorers/mountaineers coming from exotic trips to attend the preparatory meetings and was proud that the writer could also venture out into the unknown to use her new skills. I'm sure she surprised many people on her second trip with her knowledge of knots and equipment.
The science portion was fairly routine and flowed well as part of the conversations, so I didn't pay much attention to it. The recollections of past poets and Antarctic explorers was also nicely integrated.
The book felt like it needed another edit to harmonize the past and present. Spending time in the north has always been particularly healing for me, so I can appreciate her self reflection on a painful past within the context of her isolation, but it wasn't well integrated for the reader. Loki was a weird, rushed addition with little connection to the rest of the story. I realize that he reflected what she saw in her father, but the relationship or lack thereof needed more exposition or to be cut out entirely. On the other hand by knowing the challenges she faced as a child, I could understand how she acquired the skills to secure TWO highly competitive spots to the Antarctic. I just wished it flowed better.
At the Banff festival they talked about her ice climbing experience that started in the Antarctic, which I patiently kept reading until I found it towards the end, though she had mentioned the training when they reached. I enjoyed her accounts of the young explorers/mountaineers coming from exotic trips to attend the preparatory meetings and was proud that the writer could also venture out into the unknown to use her new skills. I'm sure she surprised many people on her second trip with her knowledge of knots and equipment.
The science portion was fairly routine and flowed well as part of the conversations, so I didn't pay much attention to it. The recollections of past poets and Antarctic explorers was also nicely integrated.
November 22, 2025
Very relevant to my interests: it is the memoir of a writer who heads to Antarctica to research a novel she plans to write.
McNeil captures a lot of my thinking about the poles: shifting, fractious places that resist being pinned down, even by language. My favourite thing was the irony of the dread that accompanies the arrival of winter in a continent that, to a layman, already exemplifies winter.
It’s interspersed with fragments written from McNeil’s teenage years in northern Canada, itself marked by hard winters: a difficult home life, meetings with her estranged father, haunted by the spectre of a serial killer. At first I couldn’t see the connection, until I gradually started understanding that the book isn’t only concerned with the practical, experienced aspects of life in Antarctica, but the psychological effects. The constraints and restrictions of life on the continent remind her of the constraints and restrictions of her early life, a dimension that gets some resolution towards the end.
Loved it.
McNeil captures a lot of my thinking about the poles: shifting, fractious places that resist being pinned down, even by language. My favourite thing was the irony of the dread that accompanies the arrival of winter in a continent that, to a layman, already exemplifies winter.
It’s interspersed with fragments written from McNeil’s teenage years in northern Canada, itself marked by hard winters: a difficult home life, meetings with her estranged father, haunted by the spectre of a serial killer. At first I couldn’t see the connection, until I gradually started understanding that the book isn’t only concerned with the practical, experienced aspects of life in Antarctica, but the psychological effects. The constraints and restrictions of life on the continent remind her of the constraints and restrictions of her early life, a dimension that gets some resolution towards the end.
Loved it.
December 25, 2020
It's a strange book. There are pieces of it that I enjoyed a lot (mostly those set in the Antarctic itself), but there is also a lot of quite unnecessary padding around them. I'm still not sure how it all comes together - for a long time, I had thought that the fragments set in a different typeface / not in the Antarctic came from the book McNeil was writing, but maybe it was a memoir of her teenage years? I think a straightforward diary of the Antarctic months would have been more enjoyable, overall.
November 25, 2024
I have wanted to go to the Antarctic for ages but I don't know if I'd be brave enough to do it this way. Very interesting.
September 11, 2020
With an intriguing topic, I looked forward to this voyage. The author is gifted and for that deserves two stars. But, her reminiscing about a cruel childhood establishes this is no "I'm going to the Antarctic!" travelogue. As the author continually veers into violent scenes from a childhood in Canada, I wondered if the trip was for me. I came for the icescape, the science, the challenging lifestyle, the walruses. I found sparse commentary about these subjects compared to the abuse flashbacks.
Ms. McNeil's diary entries might as well have said it was cold. Even recounts of relationships came across as halting and incomplete. Some distressing musing made me fear for her frail self.
I admire the author for getting away from whatever backwater she inhabited as a child. She made an admirable life for herself despite the torture such childhoods brings to a lifetime. But I wanted out of the book more than in and skipped much gore. I surely missed some of her message. That brave reminiscing seems fit for another memoir and should come with a graphic warning. Too bad an editor did not counsel balance and direction for the book. So much work. So important. The melting Antarctic deserves "hair on fire" attention and focus.
Ms. McNeil's diary entries might as well have said it was cold. Even recounts of relationships came across as halting and incomplete. Some distressing musing made me fear for her frail self.
I admire the author for getting away from whatever backwater she inhabited as a child. She made an admirable life for herself despite the torture such childhoods brings to a lifetime. But I wanted out of the book more than in and skipped much gore. I surely missed some of her message. That brave reminiscing seems fit for another memoir and should come with a graphic warning. Too bad an editor did not counsel balance and direction for the book. So much work. So important. The melting Antarctic deserves "hair on fire" attention and focus.
October 11, 2018
Sorry, but when I read that the author already bought the newest issue of "London review of Books" before the journey, because she CORRECTLY assumed that it will not be available on the Antarctica ...
OF COURSE it will not be available there. And what for?? And why would you assume such a thing? Because that is how we save the planet and the the Antarctica, right? By delivering - by plane - some stupid magazine to the other half of the Earth.Yup, that is how we are going to solve the issue. Why do you think the ice is melting? Exactly because we are afraid to go out of our comfort zone.
I just cannot stand when people travel to the other part of the world but expect everything to be the same. So what is the point of travelling?
The book has so far not convinced me that the author really understands the important of preserving Antarctica. Till now everything is about people! People this, people that, people shmat.
OF COURSE it will not be available there. And what for?? And why would you assume such a thing? Because that is how we save the planet and the the Antarctica, right? By delivering - by plane - some stupid magazine to the other half of the Earth.Yup, that is how we are going to solve the issue. Why do you think the ice is melting? Exactly because we are afraid to go out of our comfort zone.
I just cannot stand when people travel to the other part of the world but expect everything to be the same. So what is the point of travelling?
The book has so far not convinced me that the author really understands the important of preserving Antarctica. Till now everything is about people! People this, people that, people shmat.
January 21, 2019
I am an Antarctic-tragic...can't get enough and my interest, curiosity, fascination is abiding and could possibly be verging on obsessive. I have faced the fact that it is VERY unlikely I will ever set foot on the continent. My personal library includes many books on the subject. This book however is the first one I have read from the point of view of an 'embedded' writer, whose sole purpose is to write from personal experience, over the course of the Antarctic summer. What a brainwave of an idea to do this! Finally, a spectacular landscape, an astronaut-like experience in an extreme environment and a skilled writer delivers this experience to the reader with deft subtlety. BLISS!! Can some clever person please keep this concept as an annual event? What about a skilled writer embedded over winter?? So much to love about this book...the scientific mind versus the literary mind...the author seems to be deeply unnerved by the emotional effect the isolation begins to take on her (and we gain insight into the creep effect of the Antarctic and imagine the same on ourselves).
I can't say I found the final chapter of philosophising very readable or satisfying, but that's OK. I may need grit and reality but others may have found this epilogue type conclusion necessary.
Also, the dream like sequences where the author slipped into personal musings about her childhood and fractured relationship with her father were both enjoyable reading (in any other setting), but annoying where all I wanted to hear and read about were the Antarctic.
As well as the literary insight to the Antarctic, I enjoyed reading about the day to day practicalities...understanding what PNR means (Point of No Return), the tag system of keeping tabs on who is where and when at all times, the elite aura around the pilots, and the hide and seek game played by cruise ships visiting the Antarctic so as not to shatter the illusion of exclusivity were just some of the detail I enjoyed.
This book will prompt me to look for and keep looking for other writers who are embedded in the Antarctic because the concept of sending a skilled writer and not a scientist to the Antarctic is something that surely must be a permanent part of every research station, so that the Antarctic itself can be more accessible to those who love it, but will never experience it for themselves.
I can't say I found the final chapter of philosophising very readable or satisfying, but that's OK. I may need grit and reality but others may have found this epilogue type conclusion necessary.
Also, the dream like sequences where the author slipped into personal musings about her childhood and fractured relationship with her father were both enjoyable reading (in any other setting), but annoying where all I wanted to hear and read about were the Antarctic.
As well as the literary insight to the Antarctic, I enjoyed reading about the day to day practicalities...understanding what PNR means (Point of No Return), the tag system of keeping tabs on who is where and when at all times, the elite aura around the pilots, and the hide and seek game played by cruise ships visiting the Antarctic so as not to shatter the illusion of exclusivity were just some of the detail I enjoyed.
This book will prompt me to look for and keep looking for other writers who are embedded in the Antarctic because the concept of sending a skilled writer and not a scientist to the Antarctic is something that surely must be a permanent part of every research station, so that the Antarctic itself can be more accessible to those who love it, but will never experience it for themselves.
January 2, 2023
2.5/5
Niezbyt dobrze świadczy o książce, która w podtytule ma słowo Antarktyda fakt, że najlepszą jej częścią były w moim odczuciu fragmenty dotyczące dzieciństwa i nastoletnich lat autorki spędzonych w Kanadzie. Bo samej Antarktydy niestety tu bardzo mało. To książka o odosobnieniu, ale samotnym można być wszędzie, a tutaj lodowego kontynentu w ogóle nie czuć. Niespecjalnie odczułam też to, na czym autorce zdawało się zależeć, czyli lęk przed nieuniknionym - globalnym ociepleniem, topnieniem lodowców i katastrofą klimatyczną, która nas czeka.
Nie do końca też rozumiem, czym ta książka właściwie jest. Tytuł wskazuje na dziennik, ale typowego dziennika jest tu jak na lekarstwo, ot kilka wpisów opatrzonych datami. Pamiętnik? To już chyba prędzej, choć dla mnie tekst był momentami na tyle osobisty, że naprawdę ciężko było go czytać. Trochę tu też z kryminału, garść informacji typowo naukowych, dużo cytatów i powoływania się na książki innych autorów piszących o Antarktydzie. Niestety odniosłam wrażenie, że ich dzieła byłyby ciekawsze niż twór McNeil. W moim odczuciu "Dzienniki lodu" mocno cierpią na tym, że brak im konkretnej formy. Autorce nie da się jednak odmówić, że ma lekkie pióro i myślę, że chętnie przeczytałabym w jej wykonaniu jakąś powieść. Widać, że snucie opowieści przychodzi jej z łatwością.
Niezbyt dobrze świadczy o książce, która w podtytule ma słowo Antarktyda fakt, że najlepszą jej częścią były w moim odczuciu fragmenty dotyczące dzieciństwa i nastoletnich lat autorki spędzonych w Kanadzie. Bo samej Antarktydy niestety tu bardzo mało. To książka o odosobnieniu, ale samotnym można być wszędzie, a tutaj lodowego kontynentu w ogóle nie czuć. Niespecjalnie odczułam też to, na czym autorce zdawało się zależeć, czyli lęk przed nieuniknionym - globalnym ociepleniem, topnieniem lodowców i katastrofą klimatyczną, która nas czeka.
Nie do końca też rozumiem, czym ta książka właściwie jest. Tytuł wskazuje na dziennik, ale typowego dziennika jest tu jak na lekarstwo, ot kilka wpisów opatrzonych datami. Pamiętnik? To już chyba prędzej, choć dla mnie tekst był momentami na tyle osobisty, że naprawdę ciężko było go czytać. Trochę tu też z kryminału, garść informacji typowo naukowych, dużo cytatów i powoływania się na książki innych autorów piszących o Antarktydzie. Niestety odniosłam wrażenie, że ich dzieła byłyby ciekawsze niż twór McNeil. W moim odczuciu "Dzienniki lodu" mocno cierpią na tym, że brak im konkretnej formy. Autorce nie da się jednak odmówić, że ma lekkie pióro i myślę, że chętnie przeczytałabym w jej wykonaniu jakąś powieść. Widać, że snucie opowieści przychodzi jej z łatwością.
February 17, 2025
This is a book that is a little hard for me to wrap my mind around. It is a beautiful bit of creative non-fiction writing about time spent in Antarctica, a part of the world that is so different from anything most of us know it may as well be a separate planet.
I'm not typically especially drawn to memoirs, but I could barely put this one down. Author Jean McNeil spent a year with the British Antarctic Survey as Artist-in-residence, four months of which were spent on the continent of Antarctica, an honor typically reserved only for hard science teams. She spent much of her childhood in the Maritimes and it framed the course of her life traveling to Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard and exploring the human fascination with and reliance on such icy climes.
The read was fascinating, illuminating, and powerfully anxious as well as hauntingly dark at times. The author reflects on how individuals are shaped by their landscape as well as their circumstances but also in turn how individuals and human beings in general affect their landscape. There is an urgency about climate change and what it takes to survive the most inhospitable places that was bone chilling and captivating the whole way through.
I'm not typically especially drawn to memoirs, but I could barely put this one down. Author Jean McNeil spent a year with the British Antarctic Survey as Artist-in-residence, four months of which were spent on the continent of Antarctica, an honor typically reserved only for hard science teams. She spent much of her childhood in the Maritimes and it framed the course of her life traveling to Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland and Svalbard and exploring the human fascination with and reliance on such icy climes.
The read was fascinating, illuminating, and powerfully anxious as well as hauntingly dark at times. The author reflects on how individuals are shaped by their landscape as well as their circumstances but also in turn how individuals and human beings in general affect their landscape. There is an urgency about climate change and what it takes to survive the most inhospitable places that was bone chilling and captivating the whole way through.
October 4, 2022
This is a fascinating book by a writer who spent a year as writer in residence in the British Antarctic Survey. She is a fiction writer but this story was largely autobiographical. She tells us of her experience there, and how it changed her. She mixes it up with memories from earlier life, and then adds in a whole bunch of interesting science and geography stuff. No really, I said interesting. She also talks quite a lot about the process of writing.
Her descriptions are really very good. Without making you feel like you are having things described to you in laborious detail, she manages to draw a picture of what it is like to travel to, and to love in Antarctica. We understand the dangers and the beauty and the isolation and the characters that are drawn to the place. Some scenes are beautifully done.
The book is not overloaded with science, nor does it get too introspective. Instead it makes you feel like you have visited this place with the author. It is hard to categorise the book, and it certainly doesn't have a strong plot arc, being largely memoir. However it is worth reading.
Her descriptions are really very good. Without making you feel like you are having things described to you in laborious detail, she manages to draw a picture of what it is like to travel to, and to love in Antarctica. We understand the dangers and the beauty and the isolation and the characters that are drawn to the place. Some scenes are beautifully done.
The book is not overloaded with science, nor does it get too introspective. Instead it makes you feel like you have visited this place with the author. It is hard to categorise the book, and it certainly doesn't have a strong plot arc, being largely memoir. However it is worth reading.
May 16, 2023
3.5/5
Writer Jean McNeil travels to Antarctica as an artist-in-residence, writing about her experience and weaving it with her reflections on a problematic, hard-bitten life growing up in eastern Canada.
McNeil is at her best describing the Antarctic and a certain lack of self-esteem being a writer amongst scientists. Still, her account of time getting to the South Pole and then staying there is riveting, as are her descriptions of past explorations.
There’s a sense of unease throughout the book that increases with the amount of time McNeil spends there, and by the end of the book, her anxiety is palpable. Yet she returns and, as she notes at the start of the book, this is the effect the Antarctic has on people who visit.
A fascinating read made more challenging by the author’s reflections on her past and growing up in a series of dark and abusive situations.
Ice Diaries is recommended for anyone interested in how landscape can affect an individual, though, admittedly, a sometimes dark book about a blindingly white, inhospitable place.
Writer Jean McNeil travels to Antarctica as an artist-in-residence, writing about her experience and weaving it with her reflections on a problematic, hard-bitten life growing up in eastern Canada.
McNeil is at her best describing the Antarctic and a certain lack of self-esteem being a writer amongst scientists. Still, her account of time getting to the South Pole and then staying there is riveting, as are her descriptions of past explorations.
There’s a sense of unease throughout the book that increases with the amount of time McNeil spends there, and by the end of the book, her anxiety is palpable. Yet she returns and, as she notes at the start of the book, this is the effect the Antarctic has on people who visit.
A fascinating read made more challenging by the author’s reflections on her past and growing up in a series of dark and abusive situations.
Ice Diaries is recommended for anyone interested in how landscape can affect an individual, though, admittedly, a sometimes dark book about a blindingly white, inhospitable place.
August 9, 2019
It took me a while to get into this book - it's a slow burn - or should I say - a slow thaw. My father was a scientist in the Antarctic in the late 50s and during the 60s so I had a particular interest in the book and it certainly grew on me as I read it. It's important that this is the Antarctic written from the point of view of a woman and a non-scientist. There are some lovely descriptions and I very much liked the way she showed the different types of (mostly) men who work out there. I wasn't so sure about the 'interludes' which are about her life in Canada. Interesting as they were, I'm not sure they fitted in with the rest of the book. But if you are interested in ice, in the Antarctic and Climate Change then this is definitely one to read.
July 3, 2024
An interesting read that goes between the author's present and past childhood growing up in the maritime provinces in Canada. I am not entirely sure of the connection here. This book is about the Author's season living and experiencing life in the British Antarctic research station and life there. This part of the book was interesting. I liked it the best. It seems the editor could have done a better job with this book. The writing was great, and the author did a great job, the editor seemed to be the one asleep on the job with this book. The author also mentioned the US research station there at McMurdo bay. That is the book I want to read now.
May 18, 2024
A brilliant book, beautifully written. There is so much between the covers. Jean McNeil spent a year traveling to and living in the Antarctic as a writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey. During that time McNeil lived in a small, mostly male community and was an observer and witness. She writes about the wonders of that harsh and isolating place and her descriptions of the everchanging landscape are wonderfully written. She also explores how the time there affect her moods and brought up memories of her early years in Canada's maritimes.
June 29, 2017
This felt like a very uneven book. On the one hand, the writing gets gorgeous and almost lush as McNeil attempts to convey the cold 'other' of Antarctica. Her philosophical musings are tangentially connected in a way that it feels like you're inside her head. On the other hand I found myself really annoyed by her remove in that there were constant musings on writing and how apart writers are from society (especially Antarctic) while scientists and pilots were portrayed like they know what they're doing which felt like an immature way of reading the situation in that it doesn't give other people credit for potential inner lives as rich or pained as her own.
January 4, 2020
The 2016 Banff Grand Prize winner. This book is pensive, the writer quite brilliant, and the reader learns not just about life at an Antarctic research station, but also quite a bit about how think of open spaces and what they teach us about ourselves and the changing environment.
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