Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica | Sara Wheeler | A thoughtful and intelligent travel book

Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica | Sara Wheeler | Words worth a thousand pictures

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Terra Incognita: T...

	Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica Sara Wheeler Modern Library, 1999 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 39 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

It is the coldest, windiest, driest place on earth, an icy desert of unearthly beauty and stubborn impenetrability. For centuries, Antarctica has captured the imagination of our greatest scientists and explorers, lingering in the spirit long after their return. Shackleton called it "the last great journey"; for Apsley Cherry-Garrard it was the worst journey in the world.

This is a book about the call of the wild and the response of the spirit to a country that exists perhaps most vividly in the mind. Sara Wheeler spent seven months in Antarctica, living with its scientists and dreamers. No book is more true to the spirit of that continent--beguiling, enchanted and vast beyond the furthest reaches of our imagination. Chosen by Beryl Bainbridge and John Major as one of the best books of the year, recommended by the editors of Entertainment Weekly and the Chicago Tribune, one of the Seattle Times's top ten travel books of the year, Terra Incognita is a classic of polar literature.

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A thoughtful and intelligent travel book

This is a wonderful, beautiful book that takes you to a place that most of us can only dream of. The author has an intelligent and witty voice and can tell a good story well - there are some really memorable passages that stay with you long after you've put the book down.

This is one of those rare travel books that make you feel like you've been there yourself, so much so that I'll never have to pollute Antarctica with my presence, at least...

Words worth a thousand pictures

Sara Wheeler relates her months in Antarctica with vivid discription that as an artist I can "see" her experience. Any one who loves to travel will take this trip with her.

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This Book Changed My Life

I once had a discussion with a colleague who said, "I've never read a book that actually changed my life. I don't think books can do that." At the time, I disagreed, but couldn't articulate why.

Well, this book has been the one that changed my life. It was the first book I read about Antarctica, and it immediately peaked my interest in traveling there. I didn't want to go as a tourist (which is possible, by the way, if you can afford a $6000 cruise....) I wanted to see a science station for myself.

Well, it wasn't easy, but three years and SEVERAL job applications later, I've got a job at McMurdo Station (the US's main research station, and the largest one on the continent), and I leave for "the Ice" in two weeks. So "Thanks" Sara Wheeler! I owe you one!

This book was a pleasure to read because the author so effortlessly blends her experience with the stories of the early explorers. As a fellow, modern, female traveler I could empathize with her desire to get away to an empty, vast place. And her social descriptions are just as interesting. Funny that she is well received everywhere except by her own countrymen at the British base.

I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in Antarctica's past or present.

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helplessly hoping in the white south

After reading the thoroughly enjoyable Travels in a Thin Country, I figured on some entertaining travelogue action in Terra Incognita.

Didn't happen.

What ever happened to the adventurous Sara Wheeler of the Travels book? After slogging my way up to the middle of the book, my level of interest experienced a whiteout worthy of winter in Antarctica. I realized, as I laid the book momentarily aside, that the reading was getting pretty tedious. A bad sign, usually meaning a book is targeted for the pile heading for the used book store.

Most of this book comes across as journalizing that never got the attention of a re-write before heading off to the publisher. The lack of cohesion that should be glueing this narrative together is palpable; this is a narrative devoid of any sustaining "pull". Terra Incognita is a muddle through a pastiche of the historical events of Antarctica although it is interspersed with some pretty decent reportage of current life at the bottom of the world.

Still, there ain't much to redeem the tediousness of this book except Wheeler's wry British humour. But even that's not enough to keep one's attention from freezing to death. Wheeler is encamped with predomitably groups of scientists; as such, this isn't much of a travelogue but rather a logbook of how to hang out with the transients.

I think Sara Wheeler is worthy of producing some real decent travel writing; Travels in a Thin Country bears testimony to this. Terra Incognita, however, is a big hiccup; hopefully she will produce a better read the next book that comes our way.

Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts

The Cloud Reckoner

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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