Victim of the Aurora

'Victim of the Aurora' is a fascinating novel set during an expedition to the South Pole, but not actually about the expedition itself as such. The events chronicled by the narrator, Anthony Piers, demonstrate the undercurrents beneath the usual accounts of bravery and hardiness in such extreme circumstances. The plot unfolds gradually but inexorably, involving from the very beginning. Anthony is an interesting narrator, who regularly acknowledges his hindsight and second-guesses himself. The other men on the expedition gradually become more than heroic cyphers.

The central theme of this novel, to my mind, is that of internal as opposed to external threat. Those in the expedition expect to find in the Antarctic the simplicity of show more everything external trying to freeze them, coupled with total assurance within both the buildings and the people of the expedition. As the plot proceeds, the narrator and others realise that this is not the case and that the problems and conflicts of 'civilised' life cannot be wholly left behind. Instead, they simmer beneath the surface of expedition life. I thought the novel conveyed the hypocrisy, self-consciousness, emotional repression, and class snobbery of Edwardian gentlemen very effectively.

Without giving anything away and thus spoiling some of the reading experience, I can say that I was impressed with the creepiness of various points in the story. Notably, all that took place relating to Forbes-Chalmers. The sense of claustrophobic mystery was well judged. This is not a horror novel, but at points it is deeply unsettling. That said, it is also just plain enjoyable. I can't help being fascinated by uninhabited places at the extremes of climate, especially beautiful snowy wastes garlanded by the Northern Lights. 'Victim of the Aurora' provides a fresh and strikingly different perspective upon the behaviour of people (men) in such a place. show less

Proving yet again just how prolific Thomas Keneally (b.1935) was, even in his early career, Victim of the Aurora (1977) was his twelfth book, written some years before his award-winning Schindler's Ark (1982). Wikipedia says his bibliography is incomplete, but (as of 2024) it still lists 67 books, 41 of which are novels (four co-authored with his daughter Meg Keneally). A completist has her work cut out for her... I've read fifteen of them so far.

No wonder the critic Peter Pierce is quoted at Wikipedia as saying:

Keneally can sometimes seem the nearest that we have to a Balzac of our literature; he is in his own rich and idiosyncratic ways the author of an Australian 'human comedy'.

The interesting thing about Keneally's Australian show more 'human comedy' is that it ranges far and wide. His canvas is wider than Balzac's: Victim of the Aurora is set in Antarctica. According to his biographer Stephanie Evans Steggall in Interestingly Enough, the Life of Tom Keneally (2015), Keneally was fascinated by Antarctica, and unsuccessfully badgered the Australian Powers-That-Be to visit it until in 1968 the Americans offered to take him on one of their forays to the pure and terrible continent. He had been having trouble bringing together his story about an aged Antarctic survivor obsessed with something that had happened more than forty years previously, and — armed with the experience that gave his polar setting superb authenticity — he returned from that visit keen to get on with what was going to be a trilogy set in Antarctica. His return coincided with a position at the University of New England in Armidale, which he'd accepted apparently because of his interest in enclosed groups, as can be seen in his novels set in seminaries and in Bring Larks and Heroes. The novel On Ice, published as The Survivor (1969) was Keneally's 'campus novel' bringing together the two communities: Antarctica and academia.

He had always been drawn to the unspoken tensions in an all-male society and wanted to test his belief that there could not be pleasant fraternity on those arduous polar expeditions. There were bound to be secrets and betrayals among men who lived together too long. (Interestingly Enough, p134)

The Survivor was not a successful novel though it did better in America than here and was made into a TV version by the ABC. But Keneally turned to the topic of polar obsessions and betrayals with A Victim of the Aurora, published in 1977 by Collins (UK). From the dustjacket synopsis of that edition, Keneally's ambitions are clear...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/12/10/victim-of-the-aurora-1977-by-thomas-keneally... show less