Ice Diaries
An Antarctic Memoir
Book - 2016
"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 which 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 in 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."-- Provided by publisher
Publisher:
Toronto, Ontario : ECW Press, 2016
Copyright Date:
©2016
ISBN:
9781770413184
1770413189
1770413189
Characteristics:
xvii, 360 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm


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Add a CommentMcNeil spent four months on the Antarctic Continent (although she gives the impression that the period of time was much longer). This book is a mixture of diary entries, narrative and memories of her horrible childhood in the Maritimes in Canada. It combines science and descriptions of where she was in Antarctica. An overall interesting book, important because of the message about climate change.