Listen free for 30 days
-
Ice Diaries
- An Antarctic Memoir
- Narrated by: Bridget Wareham
- Length: 13 hrs and 27 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Ice Diaries
Buy Now for $23.51
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
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 that 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 to 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.
What listeners say about Ice Diaries
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars
-
Story4 out of 5 stars
- Roberta W
- 2021-09-19
Lyrical and surreal
This is the first book on travel to Antarctica that truly took me there. Perhaps because it was written by a non-scientist, perhaps because it was written by a woman, or perhaps because it didn’t aim to answer every question about this remote region. Travel on the ship down was as compelling as her time on the continent. I especially appreciated how she delineated her vastly different experiences when she first arrived (and had multiple options to leave) and her final stretch when she could only wait months for the first spring ship. I felt the difference. Well interwoven with her personal biography.
On a side note: it was well narrated and lyrical enough on its own… I listened to a couple clips of the “Booktrack version” and I think it would be too distracting.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall2 out of 5 stars
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars
-
Story1 out of 5 stars
- Spencer
- 2022-08-01
Pretentious
To be fair I wasn’t able to finish this. Even in the first few chapters you get the sense that this writer thinks so highly of her craft, that no one else could possibly produce this book. I wanted to know how your time was in the Antarctic, not how many useless words you can shove into a sentence to make it sound elegant.
I started and continued to listen because the narrator was great, but that can’t hold a book like this up.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!