Snow and ice are current best-selling themes, following the success of David Guterson, Peter Hoeg, Jostein Gaarder and others. High alpine settings are pure, if also a little pretentious, one literary critic explained recently. And what could be more pristine than the Antarctic - the backdrop to this latest work by English fiction writer, Jenny Diski. Presented as a non-fictional "intimate memoir" and a "captivating travelogue", it purports to be a sardonic account of a journey to southern latitudes in pursuit of "whiteout". She has been, Diski admits in her opening paragraph, "not entirely content" with the degree of whiteness in her life, after several sojourns in psychiatric hospitals.
Not for her the search for lost explorers; nor is she interested in the continent of penguins, seals and albatross from a scientific perspective. The destination had begun as a thought in the back of her head, and became "as commanding as any sexual compulsion", she says. Like self-same sexual compulsion, this Antarctic dream of hers was "inconvenient". And costly, she might have added.
She is no pilgrim, she explains, but she does aim to banish some demons, including those of her parents who had abused her as a child. Readers who may have been won over by the "travelogue" sales pitch will feel a mite short-changed at this point. Diski's real journey is one of self-discovery, initiated by her daughter who is more than interested in the family tree, and decides to find out what had happened to her maternal grandmother. The author has not seen her mother since her own father's death in 1966. Calling on old Jewish neighbours who remember her parents in the block of flats on London's Tottenham Court Road, Diski relives a troubled childhood. "You had a terrible time," one of the neighbours warns her on the phone.
This disturbed time occupies much of the text, which moves between cabin 532 of a Russian-crewed ship and the "island within an island" where she spent her childhood on Tottenham Court Road. Booked on a voyage to the British military base of South Georgia, where the Irish Antarctic adventurer, Sir Ernest Shackleton, lies buried, the "middle-aged Jewish Londoner" finds herself among a motley bunch that includes a Canadian actor besotted with an Argentinian, a couple of Zionists with political views to the right of Attila the Hun, and several birders whose view of life is invariably through binoculars.
The text is a tale of two journeys, then, in which she attempts to come to terms with a con-artist father who attempted several suicides and a mother who wanted her to become the new Sonja Henie, the skating champion turned film star. Reaching Antarctica, she seems more interested in life on board than ashore. For a while, even elephant seals are not sufficient distraction. When the ship's bridge announces the first icebergs on the bow, she is lost for original superlatives. "The colour of David Hockney swimming pools, Californian blue, neon blue, Daz blue-whiteness blue . . .," she says weakly. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, to describe them as "islands of compressed icing sugar".
The conclusion is something of a fudge, as the author debates whether she should set foot on the Antarctic continent or not. A striking description of this "dream place", where "melting and movement" seem only to "increase immutability", is spoiled by her observation that there seems little point in witnessing a "sublime empty landscape" and then passing on. Her daughter finds that her grandmother had passed away a good 20 years after Diski had last seen her. There is a sense of unfinished business here, even at the world's end.
Lorna Siggins is a staff journalist with The Irish Times, and reported on the Irish Antarctic Expedition 1997.
