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A review by steph_84
Cold Earth by Sarah Moss
4.0
Oh my goodness that was stressful! This is an intense book, but in a quiet way that creeps up on you. I am ashamed to admit I couldn’t handle the suspense and, about 3/4 of the way through, flipped to the final page seeking reassurance that everything would turn out alright. (I won’t say if it does!)
Sarah Moss is a master of the “micro”. This is the third book of hers that I’ve read and each is similar in the sense that the intense focus on the main characters - to the exclusion of all else - in some senses seems slow and parochial, but the themes are so big and the scenes so vivid that you feel like you’re right there and can’t help but fret or get annoyed in the same way that the characters do.
The location of the book - remote Western Greenland - is a major feature of the story. It’s the reason the characters are together, the history is a major topic of conversation, and the frozen landscape creates a whole raft of risks.
The narration changes between the six characters involved in the archaeological dig, and thank goodness because Nina is bloody annoying. I expect she was written to be mildly irritating for a British audience, but to an Australian her snobbery and pettiness is particularly awful.
The other characters are more likeable and it was interesting learning about medieval Scandinavian archaeology along the way.
My main criticism of the book - shared by some other Goodreads reviewers - is that the story didn’t reach its full potential. We get snippets of the past at the start and the “ghost” narrative builds but then it sort of drops off into nothing without any closure. I know it’s a bit cliche but I would have liked some resolution, even if it’s the medieval Greenlanders leaving the site after the raid, or accelerating their ghosting activities to match the increasingly frenzied state of the archaeology team, to get a greater sense of the stories being intertwined. I understand that intentional uncertainty is a key part of the book but I wanted a bit more from the Greenlanders than just possibly shuffling rocks around.
Overall this was easy to read but not light in the emotional sense of the word. Good for planes perhaps when you’re intentionally seeking an escape to somewhere far away!
Sarah Moss is a master of the “micro”. This is the third book of hers that I’ve read and each is similar in the sense that the intense focus on the main characters - to the exclusion of all else - in some senses seems slow and parochial, but the themes are so big and the scenes so vivid that you feel like you’re right there and can’t help but fret or get annoyed in the same way that the characters do.
The location of the book - remote Western Greenland - is a major feature of the story. It’s the reason the characters are together, the history is a major topic of conversation, and the frozen landscape creates a whole raft of risks.
The narration changes between the six characters involved in the archaeological dig, and thank goodness because Nina is bloody annoying. I expect she was written to be mildly irritating for a British audience, but to an Australian her snobbery and pettiness is particularly awful.
The other characters are more likeable and it was interesting learning about medieval Scandinavian archaeology along the way.
My main criticism of the book - shared by some other Goodreads reviewers - is that the story didn’t reach its full potential. We get snippets of the past at the start and the “ghost” narrative builds but then it sort of drops off into nothing without any closure. I know it’s a bit cliche but I would have liked some resolution, even if it’s the medieval Greenlanders leaving the site after the raid, or accelerating their ghosting activities to match the increasingly frenzied state of the archaeology team, to get a greater sense of the stories being intertwined. I understand that intentional uncertainty is a key part of the book but I wanted a bit more from the Greenlanders than just possibly shuffling rocks around.
Overall this was easy to read but not light in the emotional sense of the word. Good for planes perhaps when you’re intentionally seeking an escape to somewhere far away!