A review by kidgloves
Cold Coast by Robyn Mundy

5.0

This is a great story, well-told. Mundy has done a terrific job of rendering the small artic archipelago of Svalbard in the 1930s and reimagining the debut season of its first female trapper. She clearly evokes how beautiful and desolate, but also how dangerous, this environment would have been and the harsh life of an artic trapper. Mundy had a difficult challenge in making the central character, Wanny, likeable (working against the author here are a modern distaste for the fur trade and the seeming selfishness of a parent leaving behind two children—albeit teenagers—to pursue her dreams) but she nevertheless inhabits and humanises Wanny to the extent that she (the character) resembles both an accurate product of her era and also a pioneer of female emancipation. Mundy also did a great job in creating and sustaining the central relationship between Wanny and Anders—the dialogue exchanges were lovely and you could feel the tension of their relationship, largely confined as they were to a space barely big enough for a polar bear. As a personal taste, and with some notable exceptions, I don’t enjoy reading passages from an animal’s perspective; but I can recognise when it’s being done well, and Mundy never strays into sentimentality when she inhabits the animals that interact with our heroes. The ending is pretty spectacular, too—struck an excellent final note. All in all, this is a great read, displaying detail and passion that betrays extensive research and (in Mundy’s case) a personal affinity with Svalbard; one might even stretch this authorial affinity to include Wanny herself—while occupying different eras, it feels like author and subject might have been cut from the same cloth.