Ice Diaries: An Antarctic Memoir (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781770413184)

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.

Author: Jean McNeil
ISBN-10: 1770413189
ISBN-13: 9781770413184
Publisher: ECW Press
Language: English
Published: 03/01/2016
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.45lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.80w x 1.20d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 06/13/2016