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juushikaTitle: Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition
Author: Buddy Levy
Narrator: Will Damron
Published: MacMillan Audio, 2019
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 558,530
Text Number: 2102
Read Because: these boys be cold lemme tell you, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review:
The Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–1884 was a meteorological study and Farthest North attempt with catastrophic results: only seven of the twenty-five men survived. I picked this one up blind, meaning I didn't even have prior knowledge of the expedition, much less have I read primary sources; and I really couldn't be happier. Levy is great man theory-prone, drinking some of that Arctic explorer kool-aid, and this tips slightly sentimental in a repetitious way; I also prefer my discussions of cannibalism to be more crunchy and less the stinger to the narrative.
But, frankly, these are only nitpicks, because this is the ideal tragic Arctic exploration narrative, in content and coverage. I'm struck by passing similarities to the loss of the Franklin expedition, namely: when evacuating in the Arctic, it's easy to make bad decisions in good faith, and those decisions have lasting consequences—we really don't need to posit complicated explanations for them. And boy, such consequences; and Levy affords them great nuance, offering room to the mundanity of human foibles, tender in descriptions of deaths by starvation and scurvy, frostbite and misadventure; no tedium, here, and yet the long, slow misery is emphatically realized. Fantastic read, and, unfortunately for my TBR, and expedition I want to read more about.
Author: Buddy Levy
Narrator: Will Damron
Published: MacMillan Audio, 2019
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 400
Total Page Count: 558,530
Text Number: 2102
Read Because: these boys be cold lemme tell you, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review:
The Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1881–1884 was a meteorological study and Farthest North attempt with catastrophic results: only seven of the twenty-five men survived. I picked this one up blind, meaning I didn't even have prior knowledge of the expedition, much less have I read primary sources; and I really couldn't be happier. Levy is great man theory-prone, drinking some of that Arctic explorer kool-aid, and this tips slightly sentimental in a repetitious way; I also prefer my discussions of cannibalism to be more crunchy and less the stinger to the narrative.
But, frankly, these are only nitpicks, because this is the ideal tragic Arctic exploration narrative, in content and coverage. I'm struck by passing similarities to the loss of the Franklin expedition, namely: when evacuating in the Arctic, it's easy to make bad decisions in good faith, and those decisions have lasting consequences—we really don't need to posit complicated explanations for them. And boy, such consequences; and Levy affords them great nuance, offering room to the mundanity of human foibles, tender in descriptions of deaths by starvation and scurvy, frostbite and misadventure; no tedium, here, and yet the long, slow misery is emphatically realized. Fantastic read, and, unfortunately for my TBR, and expedition I want to read more about.
