I have been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now--which is ridiculous, since he's been dead for ninety years. But look at it this way. In ninety years I'll be dead, too, and the age difference won't matter.
Sym is not your average teenage girl. She is obsessed with the Antarctic and the brave, romantic figure of Captain Oates from Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole. In fact, Oates is the secret confidant to whom she spills all her hopes and fears.
But Sym's uncle Victor is even more obsessed--and when he takes her on a dream trip into the bleak Antarctic wilderness, it turns into a nightmarish struggle for survival that will challenge everything she knows and loves.
In her first contemporary young adult novel, Carnegie Medalist and three-time Whitbread Award winner Geraldine McCaughrean delivers a spellbinding journey into the frozen heart of darkness.
My Thoughts:
I loved this book...but I can see why you might either love or hate it. The conflict is multifaceted: a person, a landscape, and the main character's mind. All three of these aspects develop quite slowly, so if you need a faster-paced novel or a clear-cut villain it may not appeal to you. The book also has a lot of symbolic aspects and devices, maybe too many (Titus, the bound princess, the letters...etc). A lot of the plot stretches the limits of realism, so if you come into this looking for a story that could possibly happen, guess again.To me the heavy presence of the landscape gave this story a gothic element. The antarctic was almost alive, and a character in and of itself. I loved learning all the facts about how it is formed and changes almost as much as the historical details about Scott's expedition. It was like reading non-fiction in a candy coated pill. I'm a sucker for horror and creepiness, so Victor was a great villain for me. Of course it is obvious from the beginning that he's up to no good, but I love finding out all his various tricks and crimes along the way.
The main character can be a little grating. Her avoidance of all things sex is a little bit ridiculous, but I found her easier to understand as the story lays out how much damage Victor did to her self esteem and sense of self. It's a little bit hard to "watch" Sym not figure out things that seem obvious to the audience, but her psychological damage partially explains it.
Finally Titus. I loved Titus, even though he was undeniably sexist, which means Sym must be as well. The way the author uses Titus to create dialog that couldn't exist otherwise and show us the facets of Sym's feelings and thoughts was brilliant. He also helped lighten or darken the mood respectively. His "presence" pulled the punch of Syms isolation a little.
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