An account of an outsider in Antarctica
In case you thought, as I did, that the Antarctic is largely a colourless void, Ice Diaries: A Memoir will set you straight. Jean McNeil, who a decade ago lived for four months on this most isolated of continents, paints a very different picture of a place brimming with colour, rich in its dual character of serenity and threat: “This was our world, at four in the morning: mountains, ice, water, sky, all lit in lava, tangerine, mauve and that dark black-purple of dog’s gums, like a bonfire when the embers have burnt low.”
McNeil was an outsider in every sense. In this giant outdoor laboratory peopled by glaciologists, marine biologists and physicists, she was the only writer, chosen to be the writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey. She was a woman in a largely male environment. And she was 37; most of her colleagues on the base either brilliant 20-somethings or veteran over-50s, all working to decode the ice’s secrets.
Ice Diaries is not a scientific account but a witness statement, travel narrative and diary in one. McNeil fully embraces the Antarctic experience, learning to rappel down a crevasse, break a fall with an ice axe and pilot a Dash 7. We become engrossed in her sudden intimacies with Max and Tom, and before we know it we’re learning about ice gruel.
McNeil periodically interrupts her Antarctic narrative with a very different and disturbing memoir, this of her violent upbringing in rural Nova Scotia. It’s skilfully told, but with every flashback I found myself longing to return to her Antarctic memoir.
Although a little long in places, Ice Diaries artfully conveys both the magical allure and the deadly hauteur of this icy world that acts as an archive of our Earth’s collective past, and an ominous oracle of our future. Marcia Kaye, marciakaye.com, is a frequent contributor to the Star’s books pages.