Jon McGregor has an extraordinary ability to articulate the unspoken through ethereal prose that observes ordinary lives from above without judging. While he is also skilful at depicting the particular, it is his overview of different lives running in parallel that is so bewitching, as if he is looking down on ants running around with their own urgent purposes, but each one minuscule in the scheme of the world. All his books have been treasures, capturing both the scramble of individual lives and the stillness of the universe and nature, impassive and immutable.
His latest novel centres around an Antarctic expedition, where catastrophe seeps into the tranquillity like blood on ice. The spare prose suits the icy, barren landscape. Doc, a seasoned expedition assistant, guides his two charges, postgrad geographers mapping out the territory. He is gruffly avuncular, but also proprietary and territorial, a stickler for the rules who exempts himself.
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