Rich, atmospheric setting
- Book: Dark Matter
- Location: Arctic
- Author: Michelle Paver
“How odd, that light should prevent one from seeing.”
I’ve been in the mood for a good ghost story for a while, and when another book blogger told me that Michelle Paver’s novel Dark Matter was not only suspenseful and spooky, but also set in a wild remote place, I didn’t need any more persuasion! And I must say that it lived up to all my expectations.
Dark Matter features an Arctic expedition in 1937, when four young men set off in a Norwegian vessel to spend a year on the remote land spit of Gruhuken on the Barents Sea. For twenty-eight year old Jack, who narrates the story through journey entries, his role as wireless operator on the expedition is a way to prove himself and escape his drab job as clerk that has kept him afloat after his family was bankrupted, ending his hopes of finishing his university degree. After his family’s fall from grace, Jack has turned into a loner who has no friends and rarely associates with other people, keeping himself to himself. Gruhuken, in its remoteness, has a strange appeal to him, a way to make a new start, clean his slate. Both his background as well as his personality make Jack an interesting, rounded character whose voice is perfect for the era and drive much of story’s momentum as his initial reserve and preconceived ideas begin to crumble in the remoteness of the Arctic Circle.
Paver does an excellent job in evoking the spirit of the wild setting she describes so vividly. The initial beauty of the Arctic summer with its constant daylight, which makes the men optimistic and confident about their mission, feeling invincible even in the wild, remote region they feel themselves stranded in. As the seasons change, and the days become shorter, there is an obvious change in the men, their confidence eroded by the ever increasing darkness and the eerie silence of the surrounding land when all the birds have fled before winter. As daylight gives way to constant darkness, Paver creates an atmosphere so tense and claustrophobic that I could literally feel the cold creeping in through the cracks in the wall, grateful of my own bedside lamp that kept the night at bay whilst reading.
Tension soon mounts as the isolation plays tricks on the human psyche – or is the threat real? Jack is a man of science, and he is all too eager to explain away the feelings of dread and menace he sometimes feels when venturing outside. But as his last companions are forced to leave, and he is left on his own in this unforgiving place, he soon finds that his rational explanations are woefully inadequate to explain away the fear. Something evil is afoot at Gruhuken, and it is slowly closing in.
Paver has achieved the art of balancing her narrative on the fine line between reality and the occult, in a way that we are never quite sure if Jack’s accounts are the unravelling of his own mind due to the constant dark, the isolation and the absence of other human contact, or whether there really is something evil haunting Gruhuken. All I know is that it was so authentic and believable that I buried deep under my doona and wild horses could not have made me go outside alone in the dark! Personally, I find that it is very difficult to find a book where the supernatural element is just right – enough to make you very, very afraid, but not over the top to make you having to suspend disbelief. It is a balance achieved by very few, and Paver has absolutely nailed it! One passage about the bear post in particular had my hair stand on end as I pictured it so vividly in my mind.
For anyone looking for a good ghost story with a rich, atmospheric setting and a historical element (yes, this book has it all!), I cannot recommend this book highly enough!
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