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White (Paperback)

by Marie Darrieussecq (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £6.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 360 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition edition (4 May 2006)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0571223885
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571223886
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.6 x 1.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 455,081 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #7 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > D > Darrieussecq, Marie

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Product Description

Review

"'Beautiful, disturbing and startlingly inventive.' Metro 'A major achievement. This is indeed writing on a grand scale in a slim volume.' Guardian 'Pits the heat of desire against the unmelting glaciers. One of the freshest, quirkiest and most radical voices in contemporary French fiction.' Michele Roberts, Independent"

Product Description

It is 2015. Edmee and Pete are engineers on a remote research station in Antarctica. Both are running from tragic events at home. In this setting of magnificent desolation, just fifteen kilometres from the South Pole, a love affair begins to flourish - until there is a catastrophic power failure at the base.

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Dreamlike Poetic, 30 Mar 2006
By A Customer
This review is from: White (Paperback)
This is not a story where anything 'happens' as such, but the beauty of the book lies in how the words flow so sublimely. I just loved dipping in and out of the minds of the characters. I love the way the authoress has captured the way minds really work; the way the past and present overlap in our waking thoughts. It reminds me somewhat of Heart of Darkness; though this is more 'Heart of Whiteness'
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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Ah, this didn't do it for me, 22 Mar 2006
This review is from: White (Paperback)
This has got a load of good reviews written on its cover, but it really didn't do it for me. Very little happens: I won't spoil what does, but as I read it, I did keep on looking at how many pages remained and thinking - not much space for the actual events to happen here! And I got to the end thinking - what, that's it? Those are the events in the novel?

The prose can be very evocative of the wilderness, but the parallels are built very heavy-handedly: eg, one section begins 'Edmee, thirty-something, from... '; the next begins 'Peter, thirty-something, from...' and ON IT GOES.

Several questions are also left unanswered which I at least found frustrating: if it is impossible to stay there without heating, how did the heating get installed in the first place? Who could have bombed (from the air) one of the character's family? Why - why!? - would anyone come to the base by sea in 2015? Etc Etc.

I could go on but in sum dear reader, I would not recommend this book to you.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Between realities, 26 May 2008
By Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
"It is one long day: with a dawn; early light... the sun is coming up ... executing its circle ... dipping again slightly... rising a little higher ... during a good fifty human days, pink and orange." After that it stays for some hundred days until it slowly reverses the circles and dips into a dark period. This is Antarctica and the backdrop to Darrieussecq's extraordinary novel. Lyrical in its descriptions of the icy landscape, intriguing in its portrayal of the main characters, the author engages the reader, slowly but surely, in an exploration of human nature when placed into harsh environments.

The White Project - set sometime in the future - intends to establish a permanent European base in the centre of Antarctica, 15 kilometres from the South Pole. In preparation of the base, international teams of researchers, technicians, building crews spend summers there advancing the project. The story centres around Edmée and Peter - a radio technician and a heating engineer. Both had failed to join the first manned Mars Mission in progress and joined the White Project instead. Alternating in the description between the two characters' journey to the station - one by air and one by sea - the reader knows more about them than they seem to find out about each other.

Expectations in the reader are heightened when the two protagonists finally reach the research camp. Peter is the most aloof of the team members, usually keeping to himself, his routine only interrupted by the generator's frequent alarm calls. Edmée, as the station's link to the outside world is more in tune with everybody, but wonders about Peter's reserve; he doesn't ask for airtime to call home. The plot is relatively simple, circling around the two protagonists with other characters' interactions acting as a frame to the central narrative. While aware of their interdependence for survival in this isolated place, all residents appear to isolate themselves and ignore safety rules.

Darrieussecq's primary focus lies in the deep and changing impact the barren landscape has on the station's inhabitants. She evokes the hauntingly beautiful atmosphere brilliantly: white on white, horizon and sky merge; a whitish sun beaming down relentlessly. The line between reality and fantasy blurs; a dream-like state of mind can lead to uncontrolled and even dangerous action. The author introduces another voice, or voices, that emphasizes the surreal dimension of the landscape. The "We", the ghosts of past explorers, perished in the ice, and other spirits hover around the station and intermittently zoom in on the two protagonists; they have their own ideas about the events between them and how they should unfold...Will they hear the voices?

A short, beautifully written book by one of France's most innovative authors of today. It requires slow reading so that every sentence can be savoured, hints absorbed and pictures formed of the landscape and the people who explore it. [Friederike Knabe]
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Unusual, stylish writing, but not much of a story
Very readable for a book that relies on the style of writing rather than on a plot, but ultimately a little pretentious and not very satisfying. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Phil O'Sofa

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