Maggie Gee
Last Seen Raging
Skating to Antarctica
By Jenny Diski
Granta Books 288pp £14.99
To look for your lost mother, a mother you both fear and desire to find, while sailing in the vast whitenesses of Antarctica – Jenny Diski’s new book has the gripping, dream-like logic of a fairy story. A new version of Ham Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, perhaps, with the terrifying figure of the ice-queen replacing the loved little brother at the end of the search. Even better, it’s a true story; most people prefer them to novels, these days. Reading Diski after I had just finished reviewing a novel of spectacularly baroque artifice, I savoured her clarity, the clipped, astringent truthfulness of her prose, the ice-and-lemon of her universal agnosticism. Even a certain stylistic flatness, in parts, was a pleasure, for here we were, down upon the surface of the rink, breathing the chill, believable edge of the air with her.
The true story from which she has woven Skating to Antarctica is horribly bleak. She should, by rights, be dead by now; both her parents were veritable champions in the arts of attempted suicide, desertion, unreliability and emotional blackmail. And yet she has survived, and is a successful novelist; moreover, a cheery subtext to the story is her evidently strong and loving relationship with her own daughter Chloe – who is in some ways the heroine of this book, though she must share the honours with her remarkable mother.
‘I am not entirely content with the degree of whiteness in my life. My bedroom is white: white walls, icy mirrors…’ The book begins with what sounds like a style statement, but is soon revealed to be connected to a search for a kind of safe suspension, the ‘white oblivion’
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm