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  • Location: Antarctica, South Georgia Island, Grytviken, Nantucket

Out of the Ice

Out of the Ice

Why a Booktrail?

2000s:When you’re all alone in the ice, there’s no one to hear you scream…

  • ISBN: 978-1471155451
  • Genre: Fiction, Psychological, Thriller

What you need to know before your trail

When environmental scientist Laura Alvarado is sent to a remote Antarctic island to report on an abandoned whaling station, she begins to uncover more than she could ever imagine.

On a diving expedition, Laura emerges into an ice cave where she is shocked to see an anguished figure, crying for help. But in this freezing, lonely landscape there are ghosts everywhere, and Laura wonders if her own eyes can be trusted. Has she been in the ice too long?

Piecing together a past and present of cruelty and vulnerability that can be traced around the world, from Norway, to Nantucket, Europe and Antarctica, Laura will stop at nothing to unearth the truth. As she comes face to face with the dark side of human progress, she also discovers a legacy of love, hope and the meaning of family. If only Laura can now find her way out of the ice …

Travel Guide

Antarctica

The landscape of Antarctica is a cold and barren place to be. It’s also a place of wonder for scientists who are there to analyse goings on and changes at the whaling stations. The landscape is evoked with chilling, raw and gripping language:

“Penguins the size of small children, plump black and white bodies, robust little wings, propelled out of the sea and flew high onto the pack ice, chattering wildly beneath an Antarctic sky so vast and pale and clear it looked like it might shatter at any moment” . “Migratory. We were all migratory”

The descriptions of the wildlife brings them to life, and the coldness of the ice seeps through the pages as you read. The language and setting are one of isolation, starkness and often  suffocating, but always chilling

Kate is working for the Australian Antarctic Division for twelve months.You can only imagine what an Australian would make of the cold! Imagine then, realising that there has been some human activity before you and your team arrived!

Whaling stations

Fredelighavn is the abandoned whaling station in the novel:

1961 Antarctic Treaty

“In 1961, South Safety Island had come under the Antarctic Treaty, and in 1973 Placid Bay and Fredeglighavn Whaling Station with it, and been set as an Exclusion Zone, recognised as an exceptional wildlife-breeding site”

Despite the landscape all being white, icy, remote and cold, the atmosphere around the abandoned  village and whaling station of Fredelighavn, are what really chills – especially when there are clear signs of life that prove someone and something has been here perhaps moments before you. This is supposed to be an exclusion zone except there’s something very creepy going on. Normally wild yet gentle animals outside show signs of disturbance and even violence. A dead animal lies in a spot it could not have got there itself. A scientist with no answers and unsure if she wants the answers to the strange and frightening questions she has.

There is a real history of these whaling stations to be explored –  in real life, Leith Harbour, established in 1909, was home to the largest of seven whaling stations built near the mouth of Stromness Bay. Grytviken Harbour  was really once a large Norwegian whaling base , home to 300 workers employed in rendering the blubber, meat, bones and viscera of catches into oil. As the surrounding oceans were over-exploited however, whale populations plummeted.

USA – Masssachusetts – Nantucket Island

The American setting of the novel and this is where Erling’s home when he wasn’t stationed on South Safety Island. There is a Whaling museum here and in the novel one of the characters goes back there to find something out and to investigate certain issues in the story.  The museum is actually very much part of the island’s history too as it’s located in an 1846 candle factory, complete with a whale skeleton, artifacts & a roof deck.

Visiting Chatham on Cape Cod with  a ferry ride across the Nantucket would be nice if it wasn’t for the reasons they’re there in the book!

Italy -Venice

Only a brief interlude in Italy but one which sees a scientist go looking for answers and getting a bit lost in the maze of streets around St Mark’s Square, The Rialto Bridge and Porto Marghera. This is not on the booktrail as the visit is extremely brief. The main focus is Antarctica and the mysteries there.

 

Trail Gallery

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

It’s a cold and dark place the Antarctic – of course everyone knows that, but this book will  have you seriously wondering just how dark things can get. It’s a whole other world out there with people having to live by certain rules and social habits so as not to go mad, to suffer from “Toast” where a person goes into a fugue like state,, imagining things, hallucinating even, given the level of isolation and sense of claustrophobia, living in close proximity to strangers.

Then there’s the abandoned whaling stations with its bloody violent past and suspicious present. Now I love penguins and wildlife and the descriptions of them were stunning. Ann has gone above and beyond to show them in all their remote and abandoned glory that I almost felt I was holding a camera and documenting their behaviour myself.

There’s a lot of scene setting early on in the novel, interspersed with the threat of something untoward happening that builds nicely. The real action came a little too late for me in that I would have liked to know more about ‘after’, the consequences of it all and how Laura coped with that. The novel as a whole however built the remoteness and claustrophobic tension well. I like the descriptions of wildlife, the rules of living in a camp so remote but the men there were awful and I had no care for most of the characters to be honest.  Just as well the penguins were the stars of the show…one in particular.

I felt chilled reading the parts about how animals are treated in these conditions – whales in particular which was heartbreaking. The tough conditions of living and working on such a station were fascinating. The male dominated academic world. the abandoned research stations… there’s a lot to get your teeth into here. Oh and I so want to ride on a Hagglund now!

It just all came to an end a little too quick. It wasn’t the end I’d hope for or expected either and I did emit a sigh of disappointment but the novel before that and everything the Antarctic more than made up for it and chilled me in good ways so that I came away appreciating the natural world and being fascinated with abandoned whaling stations. I just hope that poor penguin I mentioned earlier knows I’m thinking of him.

Booktrail Boarding Pass:  Out of the Ice

Destination: Antarctica, South Georgia Island,     Author/Guide: Ann Turner   Departure Time: 2000s

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