Skating to Antarctica

by Jenny Diski

'This strange and brilliant book recounts Jenny Diski's journey to Antarctica last year, intercut with another journey into her own heart and soul...a book of dazzling variety, which weaves disquisitions on indolence, truth, inconsistency, ambiguousness, the elephant seal, Shackleton, boredom and over and over again memory, into a sparse narrative, caustic observation and vivid description of the natural world. While Diski's writing is laconic, her images are haunting.' Elspeth Barker, Independent on Sunday

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel, Biography, Autobiography, Psychology, Mental Health

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Jenny Diski was a British writer. Diski was a prolific writer of fiction and nonfiction articles, reviews and books. She was awarded the 2003 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking around America With Interruptions.

Reviews

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Old review below - but upgraded to 4 stars because I really appreciate the honesty and analysis of this writer. Forget novels such as Meg Mason's Sorrow and Bliss - here's the real deal on facing your demons.
Also I really liked that middle quote when Diski's tries twice, I think, to interview the old folks who were neighbours of her mother. The impossibility of explaining to eye-witnesses that platitudes are not factual but indicate formulaes of behaviour - which are in themselves revealing of another time, another place.

*******************************

Initially I enjoyed this book, and then somewhere around page 161 or so I just totally lost interest. I just couldn't stomach anymore Scott/Shackleton interesting facts and details etc. And then the information about the Falklands war - so long ago and so just not interested.

It was funny; I laughed, I enjoyed her biting humour - lets have an example: this is where she goes to observe elephant seals along with the other members from her cruise (previously science monitoring) ship:

'The bulls didn't roll; the attempt to move their mountain of flesh would probably have burst their hearts. ... Elephant seal is one of those euphemistic names humans give creatures who remind them of what they don't want to be reminded of. If an honest name were to be given, they would be flaccid penis seal, because the wrinkled concertinaed length and the bobbing, swinging floppiness of those extended noses is a satire on the male reproductive member. You would, if you were that way inclined, shield your children's eyes from the sight.'

There is plenty of this, seals, fellow passengers, herself etc., all are raked by this scathing and yes funny eye.

The other side of the book, which drew me was the narrative, interspersed between her Antarctic voyage, of the story about her childhood, and in particular the discussion about her mother. After 30 years of not knowing anything about her mother, Diski's daughter Chloe, starts her own investigation. "Is she still alive?"

This disclosure and Diski's research to bring back the memories of a very dysfunctional childhood, struck me as brave, honest and equally unsettling for both writer and myself the reader. Diski poses questions about the nature of memory. The mind is unable to distinguish between real memories as in live conversations, sensory input and then data, such as photos, documents - it all becomes meshed together so that we no longer know if we are remembering a scene or a photo of a scene.

I particularly liked her conversation with the three Jewish ladies and one old man, who still lived in the apartment building where she grew up, off Tottenham Court road. She captures exactly their reticence and sense of propriety, which in itself hampers her ability to uncover the truth about her parents.

"Do you know why he tried to kill himself?" I asked. Somehow my mother's suicide attempts didn't need a motive.
'I think it was frustration,' suggested Mrs Rosen.
'No it was all to do with those letters he was sending.'
'And gambling. He took a chance on everything, he loved gambling.'
'He was desperate.'
'Desperate.'
'He despaired.'
'So sad, so sad.'
'Very sad.'
'Terrible. Her mother was a pretty little woman, that I do remember. She had a nice face.'
'A nice smile.'
'And very smart before she, you know . . . And you had the most wonderful clothes before . . .'
'He had a head of silver hair,' remembered Mrs Gold. 'He was so handsome. And charming.'
'Absolutely charming. A perfect gentleman.'
'He did have something about him,' cooed Mrs Gold.
The three old ladies lost themselves in a rhapsody to the charms of my father.

Her childhood is very dark. It reveals a picture of immigrants into post world-war-two London; it reveals the importance of money and status to these second generation immigrant class - a whole other world - where east-Europeans struggled for a better life.

So considering how much I enjoyed the ealier part of the book, we should come back to the stalled point - if I flick through I can see there's plenty more nature writing, lots of funny facts and figures about penguins etc.

But it occurs to me that the structure of this book reflects the author's psychology - as if she wants to bury her ugly past with a roar of new data that she has dug up and incorporated into her writing life. The book, however, is intended as a memoir. As she writes, she knows that the information about her mother is about to be unearthed; she knew she was going to have to deal with why she had chosen not to think about or contact her mother since she walked out, when she (the author) was 14; and so the book is initiated as a way to channel her angst and pain into something productive - at least that was the idea at the start.

I think she wanted the book to be a cathartic process.

She begins with her wish for "whiteout" -
" ... that wish began with the idea of being an inmate in a psychiatric hospital ....White hospital sheets seemed to hold out a promise of what I really wanted: a place of safety, a white oblivion."

Thus she travels to the white oblivion of Antarctica - a place she hopes will allow her to deal with the feelings she has successfully blocked for the last 30 years.

So, will I continue with the book? It seems a pity not to finish it after such an agreeable first two thirds. Plus there is a small narrative drive which I would like to resolve. Diski's daughter has found a death certificate, but it may not be the right Rachel Simmonds - the mother. Presumably when Diski returns from her overseas voyage all will be revealed.

I have long since realized that these reviews are not so much about the book as about the reviewer. The reviews reveal so much more about you the reviewer. Interestingly I think this is what happened to Diski - she could write about the lead up to her mother's re-discovery but the actual pain had to be buried again. Perhaps that's why I switched off from the last third, because I was no longer getting the "real" Diski but some automated version, which clanked into motion as she realized the book needed to be finished - what she had started with all good intentions just got out of hand.

Here I am being truthful - I couldn't finish it.

Sorry folks - an addendum. So I picked up the book, and flicked through discovering that on page 185, she picks up the story of her childhood. Our author wanted to revisit the old ladies at Paramount Court, her childhood home.

I read to the end, which gave me the information I wanted about her mother - it was a predictably quiet, low key ending with her daughter supplying most of the information.

I would like to add, however, after skipping 25 or so pages where I got stuck - the penguin section, which I still haven't read - there was an interesting aside. And I quote:

"In the real world I dislike waiting, and at one time would do almost anything to avoid it. Making things happen was, perhaps still is, a way to subvert waiting."(The whole voyage thing)

"I became adept at circumventing waiting, not by avoiding what was going to happen, but by making it happen now rather than later. Not exactly oblivion, but a release from the feeling of helplessness as the inevitable takes its time making its way towards you".

And I thought yes that's what she did to herself suspended amongst the icebergs and more importantly she did it to me too - wrote herself into a kind of narrative numbness.

The real interest is the story about her and her parents, and what she learns about herself by digging into the past. I think part of us, especially when we get to 50+ really would like to know more about our parents, and our personal past.

[pattrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Insightful. I almost skipped this, although I love Diski's other travelogue and her essays in LRB, because I'm not particularly interested in Antarctica. Or skating. But this isn't about that. Antarctica is there and very vividly described—the icebergs especially—but this unsentimental memoir is about very much more. Read it knowing that you are about to learn what it feels like to be someone who was violated by her mother and that, if your basic trust was not undermined in that way, imagining your way into Diski's mental space will be as much of an expedition as her voyage into the land of the penguins. Approach the book as she did the penguins, knowing that this is a being who may perceive the world in a manner fundamentally different, although exactly the same, as your own.

[Moira Dennison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read all her books but this is the one I come back to most often. The whiteness she seeks both in her life and in the ice and snow make perfect sense when the pieces of her jigsaw begin to meld together. It's brevity in many ways belies its depth. Just like the icebergs she passes - there is more to this than first meets the eye

[Vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was my first experience of Jenny Diski's writing, and I have to say I'm a fan. Whilst I'm not sure that this book was the best one to start with in terms of subject matter, I'm excited to explore more of her work as her writing style is really excellent. I enjoyed learning about her childhood and the relationship with her parents, particularly her mother - I knew pretty much nothing about her or her life going into this book, and was surprised by how dramatic and messed up her child and teen years were. The sections relating her travels to Antarctica were not so interesting to me sadly. I didn't really have much interest in the stories about former explorers in Antarctica, the Falklands, or the fellow passengers she met. However, what did enchant me were her descriptions of the landscape and her travels on the boat, along with her desire to be alone in that unending white place and to feel separate from the world. It was both morose and beautiful at the same time. So I'm glad I read this, and I'll need to research what Diski book is right for me as my second venture into her body of work.

[Kirsty · Rating 2 out of 5]

I borrowed Jenny Diski's Skating to Antarctica from the library, as I have wanted to read her work for ages. Several of my friends here on Goodreads rave about her. This is the singular tome which she has written that appealed to me the most, a travelogue about her journey to Antarctica. It is heralded on its back cover by Elspeth Barker, Michele Roberts, and Lisa Appignanesi, three writers whom I love. So, with all of these factors in tow, why did I not enjoy the book?

Skating to Antarctica simply failed to pull me in. I felt that her writing was a little dislocating in places, and it jumped around too much between separate times and places, which were linked only to her. Whilst the premise intrigued me greatly, then, the prose did not appeal.

[Krysten · Rating 1 out of 5]

what I learned from this book: don't read a book simply because the word Antarctica is in the title. Diski is yet another one of those memoirists who assume they are interesting because they had a fucked up childhood. she does go to Antarctica, but it is mentioned very minimally in the book. I did not like it.

[Jane Routley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really a travel book but a memoir and a rather beautiful one even though it is a memory of a very disfunctional up bringing. Diski writes so poetically. I heard bits of this on the radio and wanted to read it all.

[Gail · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is another book I read as part of a challenge my local library had set up, to read a book from each continent. It's an autobiographical account of Jenny Diski's trip to Antarctica - and, to be honest, not the kind of book I would normally choose to read. I'm not really interested in people's difficult trips to rugged parts of the world. But it was not at all what I expected - Jenny Diski's desire to travel to Antarctica had nothing to do with ruggedness - it was simply that she wanted to be surrounded with whiteness. This, oddly, made sense to me.

Besides, it wasn't really a rugged trip at all - it was an organised trip, almost more like a cruise. Much of the description of the trip is about her fellow travellers - insightful and acerbic little snippets of conversation and her observations, to give an idea of the different characters. In many ways, I found I could relate to Jenny Diski - she is not a particularly active person. She likes stillness, and solitude. Socialising with her fellow travellers is a bit of a chore that she feels she needs to do, so that she doesn't come across as unsociable. She likes to observe, and is dryly amused by the things she observes.

Something I found disruptive in the account is that it is half about her trip to Antarctica, and half about her difficult relationship with her mother - both of which are interesting in their own right, but made the experience of the book choppy and disorienting, as she switched from one to the other, giving a potted history of her childhood, and then her more recent trips to visit her childhood neighbours, to find out more about her childhood. I suspect the choppy and disorienting effect is deliberate - to create contrast and emphasise why whiteness and stillness are so important to her - but I found it annoying, because I wanted to experience the whiteness too. To fully experience it and relax into it through her words. I loved the descriptions of the penguins. I didn't want to then have to return to the deep recesses of her memory, and relive her attempts to piece together her childhood. I wanted to stay with the penguins!

But on the whole, although I didn't like the disjointedness of the book, I enjoyed the writing very much, and found myself keen to read more by this author. Hopefully something more whole - this was more like a book of essays or short stories.

[Jack Hawkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

An utterly beautiful memoir, exploring themes of memory, self, and our perceptions of the world around us. Diski captures the complex journey of her life with mesmerising beauty, and the story shines through on every page with poetic clarity to envy any novel. The way she describes the people she meets are written so vividly, with such depth, it lends further credence to the idea that the people we meet are characters in the novels of our lives.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange book. A travelogue of going to Antarctica and a concurrent journey to understand her own terrible family. Jenny sought emptiness, indolence, "whiteness" (the last point interesting as she was visibly Jewish), the experiences of total apathy she found in a mental hospital at 14. All this in contrast to her dysfunctional, violent, chaotic childhood which she unpicks. The cruise bit is less appealing, although funny, than her very insightful and taut family history although I do see how they twine together. Most of all I am proud how she found out how to survive.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir follows Diski's journey to Antarctica, and describes her childhood with her dysfunctional family. I love Diski's narrative voice: spare, wry, bitter, she captures a range of feelings I rarely see expressed. She is a reluctant traveller, unimpressed by both the people she meets on the ship to Antarctica, and by much of the scenery. She is happiest alone in her cabin, enjoying the sight of sea, grey skies, and the occasional iceberg. Her descriptions of her childhood are similarly detached: her parents were deeply dysfunctional, abusing her both emotionally and physically, constantly living beyond their means, and both repeatedly attempting suicide. Diski describes her experiences with a chilling lack of self-pity, but a detachment and understanding that renders her accounts insightful and imaginative. Reading Diski is both a journey into the dark places of the mind, and also a refreshing look at modern life and social norms. I enjoy her work and particularly recommend this book.

[Barbara Klein · Rating 4 out of 5]

The format reminds me of Diski's later book about train travel. It seems to be a common theme in her work to contrast the equisite feeling of safety and solitude in her room, whether its in a train or a ship while travelling the US or to Antaractica. Her retreat into herself and her room seems more pleasureable than the actual adventures of travel. This book, once again, examines her childhood and her disfunctional parents. Her complicated love/hate relationship with her father and the almost total dissolution of her relationship with her troubled mother. I love Diski's snarky insights into her fellow travellers, the pros and cons of travel in general. Maybe that was her best adventure, the exploration of her mind and psyche which could only be accomplished while she was in motion. Her life seemed to be a perpetual search for the safety and permanence of a home she never had as a child.

[Jane Wilson-Howarth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get into this book. I didn't engage at all with the writer and couldn't see any reason to read about her tourist trip to the Antarctic. Yes she is very honest and open but I was expecting the journey to be more than a holiday cruise and descriptions of what Big Jim had for breakfast. Didn't raise a smile, I fear.
I also expect published authors to be careful about their facts and several pulled me up... London University, the Atlantic Sea, planes refuelling with petrol. Trivial I know but I like accuracy.
I'm sure it is a very clever book but I didn't find it entertaining and didn't finish it.

[Rebecka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not quite in love with Diski yet... Perhaps I should have started with one of her fictional books instead? I'm pretty sure I shouldn't have started with a translation, anyway. The language is stilted and weird, with some outright anglicisms in it, and Diski just comes across as grumpy and slightly annoying. Is that her "voice" in English as well?

As for the story, I'm attracted to anything Arctic/Antarctic. But, because of the tone of voice, I could never care much about her childhood story.

[Hannah Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a joy to read. And a hard act to follow. The book I'm reading now is a memoir by a non-writer and you can tell... Anyway, I just love how she combines quite exciting adventures with soul searching and memories from her harrowing childhood. It brings together all my favourite genres. Plus, as I've mentioned in earlier comments, we have a lot in common regards social dread. Though she seems to quite often throw herself into small talk, so we differ on that point. I guess she needs material for her writing. Am definitely going to read Strangers on a Train, and maybe her novels.

[Martinxo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diski is a great writer and I can see myself in much of what she writes.

[Leggo Quando Voglio · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Se la terra fosse piatta ed estesa all'infinito, mi chiedevo in silenzio, ci sarebbe stato un orizzonte?"
Pattinando in Antartide è il primo memoir scritto da Jenny Diski, autrice che ho già letto, sempre grazie a NN Editore, con In gratitudine.
L'autrice britannica, già conosciuta per i suoi romanzi, decide in questo volume di raccontare in parallelo, due aspetti apparentemente molto diversi della sua vita che, in realtà sono correlati da un rapporto di causa/effetto: l'autrice pensa che l'uno abbia creato in lei il bisogno che vedremo estrinsecarsi nell'altro.
A capitoli alternati l'autrice ripercorrerà entrambe le esperienze e trarrà le proprie conclusioni, senza mai esplicitarle completamente. I due temi possono, dunque, essere interpretati anche come qualcosa di successo nello stesso periodo ma di scollegato.
Da una parte Jenny Diski ci racconta il suo rapporto con la madre naturale e, di conseguenza, anche con il padre. I suoi ricordi d'infanzia riaffiorano grazie alla figlia della scrittrice che decide autonomamente di scoprire qualcosa al riguardo dello stato attuale della nonna, di cui madre e figlia non sanno assolutamente nulla, nemmeno se sia ancora in vita o meno.
Coinvolta dalla figlia Jenny decide di indagare meglio, arrivando persino a parlare con gli ex vicini di casa della sua famiglia per scoprire come fosse vista dall'esterno e per poter ricostruire e comprendere meglio quei ricordi, che la mente infantile della Jennifer di un tempo avrebbe potuto modificare nel tempo senza mai capire realmente.

Il resto della recensione su https://www.leggoquandovoglio.it/libr...

[Gayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skating to Antarctica is an interesting mix of travelogue and memoir. Diski writes about her childhood memories, about her mother's depression and her relationship with her father, a con man, who disappeared when she was eleven. She revisits her neighbours from this time to help her make sense of some awful things that happened to her as a child and learns more about how things were viewed from the outside. Diski's own depression and the idea that she may one day renew her relationship with her mother, or that she may find out what happened to her after she was sent to a foster family, is central to the book. This exploration of her family life growing up, is interwoven with her decision to take a sea voyage to Antarctica and Cabin 532, where she meets some interesting fellow travellers and explores the landscape of this beautiful wilderness.

I really enjoyed the mix of themes in this book, and I thought the writing was superb. I was particularly interested in the travel aspects more that the family story, and overall a very interesting approach to a memoir.

[Debby Binns · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read and loved ‘Stranger on a Train', I have to say I'm a big fan of Jenny Diski’s quite unusual writing style. Skating to Antarctica did not disappoint. Stranger on a Train hinted at how dramatic and messed up her child and teen years were. This book gave us a history of her London childhood and those traumatic years (and the long term effect they have had on her). The sections relating to her travels to Antarctica were also brilliant. We heard the stories about former explorers in Antarctica, the Falklands and her fellow passengers. I also absolutely loved her descriptions of the landscape and her travels on the boat. She had a desire to be alone in that unending white place and to feel separate from the world. It was beautifully written. It’s a 4 and a half stars from me!

[Jeremiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very reminiscent of Fun Home to me.

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cit.

[Harriet Crossley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Jenny’s writing style. The mixture of travel, her personal history and reflections made this such an interesting read.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

The notion of skating al fresco always brings to my mind the worry of thin ice, and in some ways the feel of this memoir is of ice at times so thin that it might be possible to fall through. Skating to Antarctica therefore has a fragility to it, but it's a fragility told by a writer who's managed to weather many storms and isn't going to give up just yet.

Superficially the memoir's about the author taking a cruise in a converted icebreaker to the southern continent; but under the guise of a travelogue this account focuses on a journey of a different kind. Jenny Diski, as is well known by now, had a difficult childhood in a dysfunctional and abusive family, becoming estranged from her parents to the extent of not even knowing whether her mother was alive or dead. It's the questions over her mother's life and death that forms a counterpoint to the physical trip and makes this piece of creative non-fiction so readable.

Born in 1947, Jennifer (as she was then) had parents who were not what they at first seemed; so middleclass respectability gradually gave way to a portrait of a professional conman perpetually at war with his increasingly disturbed wife. As the marriage fell apart and living conditions worsened their only child went to a variety of schools and then in and out of psychiatric institutions, losing contact with her mother after her father died. A brief time of stability came when she was in the care of Doris Lessing (whom she refers to here only as "the woman I lived with") but her mother's erratic behaviour and suicide attempts led to Jenny breaking permanently with her. People would wonder if her mother was alive or dead but Jenny would say she neither knew nor cared.

It wasn't till her own daughter Chloe began asking questions and doing her own bit of detective work that Jenny was persuaded to confront this aspect of her past. Her accounts of the conversations she has with former neighbours in the block of flats where she used to live as a child are by turns wryly amusing and starkly revealing. Then she takes it into her head that the clinical whiteness of Antarctica is what she is most in need of, eventually leading to her 1996 voyage aboard the cruise ship Akademik Sergey Vavilov, sailing from South America to the Antarctic via South Georgia. 

As with most trips, it doesn't always pan out as expected. Her fellow passengers intrigue her, and she gives fascinating pen portraits of some of them. She muses on the paradox of seeking solitude and whiteness in South Georgia while cameras click amid penguins and elephant seals. She revels in being alone in her cabin when "feeling rotten", enjoying the sensations of the moving ship, watching icebergs float by. And in between we are given reminiscences of incidents she experienced half a world away. The metaphor of skating on ice, allied with an actual voyage by icebreaker to Antarctica, therefore ties in quite naturally with the idea of Diski ploughing through the icy barrier that had built up between her mother and herself. We don't hear about the return journey but we find out what awaited her when she came back home.

Her reluctant quest is quietly told, matter-of-fact with no histrionics. There's no getting away from the abuse and the depression she unsurprisingly suffered from, but she recounts it all without no attempt to play up the misery. "I found it was possible after a time, to achieve a kind of joy totally disconnected from the world. I wanted to be unavailable and in that place without the pain. I still want it. It is coloured white and filled with a singing silence. It is an endless ice-rink. It is Antarctic."

I liked this book. I liked its honesty, its discursive narrative, its descriptive prose.  Diski was born a year before me, and whilst her life followed a very different course than mine did I nevertheless sensed a familiarity with the times she grew up in, with the same retrospective awareness of the strangeness of family life, and with a nagging need for solitude. Despite its inherent melancholy I felt better for having read this, and you can't ask more of a book than that it makes you grateful for what you have.

http://wp.me/s2oNj1-skating

[Rachel Stevenson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed Diski’s travelogue Stranger on Train: Daydreaming and Smoking around America, which isn’t really about the US and this one isn’t necessarily about Antarctica either, although Diski describes the landscape in lovely detail, the fauna and flora (what is there is of flora), the icebergs and floes, and brings in the histories of Scott and Shackleton, including how Captain Oates should have made the ultimate sacrifice a few days earlier: the rest of the crew might have survived. She’s at her wry, dry, ironic best when describing the other passengers, including the birders, the Zionists and the soldiers outposted in South Georgia. For someone who craves solitude, isolation, blankness, she’s keen on other people, or at least describing them.

Alternating with her travel 'journal' is a memoir of her childhood and specifically her mother, who Diski hadn’t seen since 1966. Diski is aware of popular psychology and she conflates her desire for blank whiteness with the hospital stays she had in the '50s and '60s when she was safe, away from her crazy mum. This technique of moving between two seemingly different but connected topics is also visible in Diski's cancer diary for the LRB, which is interspersed amongst memories of living with Doris Lessing in the '60s and '70s. In this book, Diski claims not to want to know what happened to her mother and not to care, but I do wonder if her feelings towards her were transferred to Lessing, a brilliant writer but difficult person; reading Diski's memoir of living with her, it sometimes seems that she moved from one diffi­cult mother to another.

[Carmen Thong · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that I would neither describe as strange nor brilliant. Firstly, it is entirely familiar in its middle-class British woman memoirist persona. Her writing style - the tendency for existentialist questions, jumping chronology, everyday anecdotes that are written so heavily that they are begging to be taken with significance, obligatory questioning of the art of writing, reconciling with inescapable conformity - all hallmarks that I've read countless times before and have come to expect. The worst part, however, is Diski's insistence of not caring a jolt about her mother, who somehow dominates a book with Antarctica in the title. This book took 144 pages to actually get there - while previous pages only had sparse accounts of her journey. She also set up a seemingly adventurous and insurmountable task of going to Antarctica in her earlier chapter but leaves her eventual opportunity rather unexplained. The actual account of being at Antarctica is entirely a tour review. At some point I kinda wished an elephant seal would maul someone's leg.

However, given this - there are some spots in the book which are rather masterful. The best part of the book, the bit about the territorial instinct of humanity as displayed through touristic photography, the pastness of the present, and the ironic desire for desolation, are wonderfully written. Thus, I have refrained from giving the book a one star.

[Madeleine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tells two stories at once: one of the author's journey to Antarctica in search of whiteness and oblivion, and one of her lack of a journey, following a brutally difficult childhood, to find out whether her mother has died or not. Jenny Diski writes with disarming clarity and surprising beauty, especially about Antarctica. I admit that I got bored with the abusive-mother thread — not to denigrate or disrespect Diski's experience, which she describes well and poignantly; but I much preferred hearing about the ice and silence.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this over 5 years ago and still remember it vividly.

[Krysten · Rating 2 out of 5]

it had disappointingly little to do with Antarctica and was mostly about the author's sort-of-shitty childhood. memoirs about sort-of-shitty childhoods are sooo passé.

[Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazingly good book. Very surprised. Not my usual stuff but fascinating life.

[Nicola Waldron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it; wrote a paper on it! Perfectly structured gem...