MixedNew City LitAn unsettling ghost story with elements of social satire, historical fiction and climate fiction, this ambitious book explores themes of guilt, memory and racial identity through an inventive but sometimes bewildering lens ... Barry certainly knows how to evoke disorienting physical and mental states; her vivid descriptions are not for the weak-stomached. She also has a sharp sense of humor ... While Barry’s style is distinctive and compelling, the structure of the novel’s central mystery is frustratingly redundant ... More successfully, Barry draws parallels between the hubris of the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and that of modern humanity.
