Books - Chasing the Light by Jesse Blackadder
Mount TBR so far = 2/24
It's the early 1930s. Antarctic open-sea whaling is booming and a territorial race for the mysterious continent is in full swing. Aboard a ship setting sail from Cape Town carrying the Norwegian whaling magnate Lars Christensen are three women. Lillemor Rachlew, who tricked her way onto the ship and will stop at nothing to be the first woman to land on Antarctica; Mathilde Wegger, a grieving widow who's been forced to join the trip by her calculating parents-in-law; and Lars' wife, Ingrid Christensen, who has longed to travel to Antarctica since she was a girl and has made a daunting bargain with Lars to convince him to take her.
As they head south through icy waters, the race is on for the first woman to land on Antarctica. None of them expect the outcome and none of them know how they will be changed by their arrival.
Based on the little-known true story of the first woman to ever set foot on Antarctica, Jesse Blackadder has captured the drama, danger and magnetic pull of exploring uncharted places in our world and our minds.
I absolutely loved this book - it's beautifully written, about something amazing, and every character and place is real and interesting and worth reading about. I can't believe that it was so hard to get hold of (we were supposed to read it for book group in MK last year, but gave up because it just wasn't practical), because it's just that good. It follows the lives of the three women, and is very real about them - they're not made out to be paragons or heroines or anything other than real people in an extraordinary situation, and that's a measure of quality - and equality in a book for me. It follows the paths of their lives as they struggle to be who they want to be against early 1900s mores, and are ultimately thrown together on this journey to the Antarctic. The Antarctic, of course, is another character entirely - mysterious and elusive and ultimately just as real as any of the others.
I've used this book for the New to You Author square on my Bingo card, because I have every intention of finding more books by Blackadder (she's written one about Mary Queen of Scots too - apparently she was fed up with people asking whether she was related to Rowan Atkinson, went to visit Scotland to find out more about the real Blackadder family - she's Australian, by the way - and ended up writing The Raven's Heart)
Booklist 2019
1. Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift (bookgroup)
2. You take the Hippy, I'll take Goldilocks by Gil Hale (fanfic re-read)
3. In a Land of Shadows by Gil Hale (fanfic re-read)
4. The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham (MountTBR, LjBookBingo)
5. A Walk on the Beach by E.T. (fanfic re-read)
6. Chasing the Light by Jesse Blackadder (Mount TBR, LjBookBingo)