By the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a true story of adventure and obsession in the Antarctic, illustrated with color photographs.
[A] modest-sized opus ... In straightforward but evocative prose, Grann captures the drama and sheer audacity of his subject’s forays into forbidding places – where one of the many ways to die is simply to get wet ... For all of its page-turning appeal, the book studiously avoids psychological speculation on what compels its subject to repeatedly to place himself in harm’s way. Grann doesn’t openly address the possibility of inner demons, but he drops hints here and there...Fascinating.
Unlike Worsley’s grueling advance across an inhospitable continent, Grann’s prose moves at a brisk pace. Polar journeys are inevitably stories of monotony — the endless treks over unchanging landscape, the interminable periods of downtime waiting against the weather — but The White Darkness proceeds aplomb, with a style that conveys the immensity of Antarctica and the difficulty of Worsley’s journeys without ever bogging down. At times, the pace is a little too quick: Worsley’s second polar expedition in 2012 is covered in only two paragraphs. The photographs help fill in some of these gaps ... With more space, Grann might have delved into the historical and political implications of such a gripping yarn...
Grann infuses with the suspense of a thriller ... What makes The White Darkness so compelling is Grann’s gift for memorable detail...and Grann is expert at making readers feel as if they are on the journey with the team ... gripping.
