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Review
'Jenny Diski's new book has the gripping dream-like logic of a fairy story...Even better, it's a true story...I savoured her clarity, the clipped, astringent truthfulness of her prose, the ice-and-lemon of her universal agnosticism.' Maggie Gee, Literary Review ** 'This is her best and most moving book to date...sassy and vulnerable...Diski puts all her novelistic skills at the service of discovering and arranging autobiographical truth.' Michele Roberts, The Times 'Skating to Antarctica is a fascinating, moving account of two voyages...Diski's book shines out for its wit, lack of self- pity and strong interest in survival. I relished her sketches of ship routine, solemn penguins and bored soldiers...Diski has a great sense of the absurd, whether she is writing about her conman father or the sexual antics of an elephant seal. Antarctica is not barren after all.' - Helen Dunmore, Express 'A non-fiction masterpiece.' - She 'This extraordinary account of a journey to the most barren outer reaches of the planet becomes a beautiful, complex symbol: it's a voyage of self-discovery to the white emptiness that is painted as truth, despair, calm and madness - all at once.' - Good Housekeeping 'There are not many novelists who would make a serious request to be a writer in residence in the Antarctic. But then there are not many novelists like Jenny Diski.' - Observer Review 'The conjunction between Antarctica and her past is predicated on a notion of emptiness...The symbol becomes so powerful that Diski, like Pynchon before her, finally uses a lower-case 'a': that place without pain is antarctic...Skating to Antarctica is both fragmentary memoir and sketchy travelogue. Together they tell the shadowy story of an inner journey form darkness to light. It is an inconclusive trip, but then all the best ones are.' - Daily Telegraph 'An original and striking memoir, cool but authentic, filled with emotional imagery and insight that is all the more resonant for its restraint.' - Independent on Sunday 'Jenny Diski's Skating to Antarctica, part traveller's tale, part autobiography, tells the story of a trip to Antarctica, interwoven with reminiscences of her dysfunctional family and daughter's quest to find what became of Diski's own long-lost mother. There are great descriptions of penguins and elephant seals and Diski's fellow travellers, and a gripping account of Diski's amazingly awful parents. Keeps you appalled and enthralled.' - Observer '... unfailingly sharp-edged prose, confession with its wit about it.' - Times Literary Supplement.
Michele Roberts, The Times
'Her best and most moving book to date … sassy and vulnerable'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am writing this review because I think the earlier reviews are unfavourable to this book. It is excellent, but it is not prepatory reading for an expedition, I don't think it should be classed as travel writing. It is an autobiography and as such is extremely good. It is lucid and retains a wry sense of humour.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I agree that if you're after a travel book you would be disappointed. But I have to say that you cannot divide the Antarctic chapters of the book from the introspective chapters. The author is going on her own personal journey and the Antarctic represented a bleak inner stillness, an escape, a pure white absence. I interpreted her as striving for an absence of living, and had she not had this goal she might have succumbed to the absence of Life. She took us with her from this point of despair to where she tackled the root of her problems and reached a stage where Life moves forward. I would like to extend a heartfelt thanks to Jenny Diski for sharing such an intimate part of her life and helping others to recognise reflections in their own.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In Skating to Antartica Diski 'works out' a lot of the issues that she refers to with calm reflection in her later offerings. I read Stranger on a Train prior to this book and found her healthy detachment from her past quite fascinating. Now I have realised, by reading Skating, how she got to that place of healthy detachment. This book works through some horrific periods of her life with a touch of the blase; which can be shocking to those who picked this up as a travel book. This tremendous journey is interspersed with flashes from her past and the life she left back in England - This is a journey that took the author miles; emotionally and physically - and it will take you there too if you allow yourself to follow Diski's rather disorganised yet enchanting style of writing.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Brilliant piece of autobiography (not travelogue)
Reader beware: if you are looking for a travelogue, Diski is not the place to start. Skating To Antarctica goes to may places but the journey is far more about the journey than the... Read more
Published 29 days ago by RTY_
An Introspective Travelogue.
An autobiographical account of a journey to Antarctica where the author also shares with us her battle with sanity. Honest, poetic and touching. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Love my Kindle
Skating to Antarctica
This is the first work of Diski's I have read and initially I thought the author was becoming too self-reflexive and I almost dismissed the book. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Pauline Bowerbank
Never listen to a Mixed Bag of Undergraduates
Nor should we listen too hard to somebody who was forced to read the book or for that matter anybody enrolled on a writing class.
Published on 19 Oct 2008 by Obscuratist
A running commentary on how miserable the author's life was.
I had to read this book for my writing class. I do not reccomend it unless you like negativity. I don't know why the word Antarctica is in the title. Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2008 by DEE ZEE
No-one in my creative writing group enjoyed this.
We're a fairly mixed bag of undergraduates in our second year but not one of us really enjoyed reading this book. We found it depressing and the author self-indulgent. Read more
Published on 29 Nov 2006 by S. Jackson
Fascinating
This is a brilliant book. I found the whole very interesting, very easy to read, very thought-provoking. Read more
Published on 4 Sep 1999
A travel book?
The 'real' travel stuff is interesting (I never realised that elephant seals were SO big), but, while admiring the author's honesty and courage in recounting her painful early... Read more
Published on 28 Feb 1999
Travels in a mind
This book never really got there for me (or perhaps the author). This was more about travel inside a mind ( nurture or nature)than from a true travel book situation. Read more
Published on 24 Oct 1998
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