Polar explorer Fiennes explores the life and adventures of his predecessor, Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose 1915 attempt to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice. The disaster left Shackleton and his men alone at the frozen South Pole, fighting for their lives.
Drawing on his own experience, Mr. Fiennes offers a rare perspective ... Of the inner man the reader learns little, except refrains about dreams of fame and discontent with domesticity ... Mr. Fiennes hasn’t discovered fresh material, but he brings the promised perspective of one who has been there, illuminating Shackleton’s actions by comparing them with his own ... The author reveres his subject, but this is no hagiography. Mr. Fiennes acknowledges that Shackleton is 'a man of many faults.' The prose style is clear, notwithstanding a proliferation of clichés that slow an otherwise brisk narrative. Anachronistic language at times strikes the wrong tone ... Readers of Mr. Fiennes’s pages will imagine the mental anguish of those days and nights for themselves. Beginners to the Heroic Age will enjoy this volume, as will serious polar adventurers seeking advice. For all readers, it’s a tremendous story.
Ernest Shackleton knew how to tell a good story. So does Ranulph Fiennes ... His biography of Shackleton, however, is less about derring-do and more about the many facets that make up an explorer ... What makes this book so engaging is the author’s own storytelling skills. His text is peppered with interludes on everything from food to psychology and why three can 'be a crowd.'
Fiennes...uses this personal history to inform our understanding of Shackleton’s triumphs and ordeals ... He is familiar with the Shackleton literature and the many controversies, but his book is not a 'last word' biography, dense with scholarly apparatus. Think of Fiennes, rather, as an Edwardian raconteur with veiny cheeks and a plummy growl who pours you a dram and pulls you close to the fire. He displays a hearty faith in Burberry and blubber and a schoolboy’s delight ... If the listener by the fire were to indulge an occasional rolling of the eyes, the movement would be arrested by the sight of the speaker’s fingertips, several of which happen to be missing. Fiennes did the amputation himself after frostbite turned them gangrenous.
