Dark Matter

by Michelle Paver

'What is it? What does it want? Why is it angry with me?'

January 1937.

Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he's offered the chance to be the wireless operator on an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it.
Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Gruhuken.
But the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice. Stay or go.
Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return - when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible.

And Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone.

Something walks there in the dark.

• ISBN10: 1409123782
• ISBN13: 9781409123781
• Publish Date: 21 October 2010
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 29 November 2012
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
• Imprint: Orion (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

DNF @ 127p. (of 255p.)

Dark Matter was Paver's first book for the general adult readership, and it shows. To me, this still reads like a YA novel and I cannot get invested in the story or the main character's situation.

What is worse to me, reading Dark Matter after having read Thin Air, is that Dark Matter reads like a practice piece - that, with a few tweaks, would develop into Thin Air later.

I ended up skipping ahead to the end of the story and am glad to have done so. The similarities with Paver's later book are very strong, so I do not feel I missed much by "abridging" this read.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver is a slow burning ghost story; slowly the tension builds and builds until... The story kicks off on 7th January 1937, the first entry being written in the journal of Jack Miller who is preparing for an expedition to Gruhuken. This uninhabited location in Arctic is the back drop of this chilling story, the atmosphere and solitude all playing a role in building the tension within this story. The relationship between Jack and his companions Gus, Algie, Hugo and Teddy are one of the key aspects that hold this book together.

It’s really hard to review a book like this as I don’t want to give too much of this book away, but I’ll try my best. The story was a very basic one, the isolations, feeling of being completely alone works rather well in the book. The plot and surroundings all slowly build the tension that Jack is feeling. I started off reading this book feeling a little distracted but the further I got in the book the more absorbed in the story I found myself. It’s one of those books you want to read on a cold winter night; the snow outside and nothing but the creaking of the house to keep you company. Unfortunately it never snows and never gets cold here but I can just imagine reading this book in that situation and enjoying it a lot more.

The novel is a well polished ghost tale, reminding me of the old gothic novels of the 19th century; building the tension and characters as you read. While it’s a short book it did a great job at capturing all the key elements to haunt the reader. I’m reminded a bit of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James and even to a less extent The Woman in Black by Susan Hill in the way they can build tension in such a short time. I really love the chilling gothic styles of a book like this, I would love to read some more books similar to this one and compare it to the ones I’ve already read. While I really enjoy this novel I can’t see myself rating this book higher than three and a half stars, but I can’t tell you what was missing in this novel.