Terra Nova

The supposed hero of this book is Captain Edward Heywoud, a paragon of colonial manliness who “[trails] ambition and resolve.” For years, he’s climbed the world’s highest peaks, sometimes with his photographer wife, Viola Colfax. Now, in 1910, he and long-time climbing companion James Watts and several other hardy men and their sled dogs are tackling the ultimate challenge: to reach the South Pole. And not just make it there, but do so before a Norwegian expedition claims the glory for its king rather than England’s. In a parallel struggle is Viola, who also isn’t the book’s hero, fascinating though she is. She’s in love with Edward, although he disapproves of many of her activities and is fond of telling her what she will do, but she also loves the gentler James, and the two are having an affair. While the men are away—a voyage chronicled in gripping and often horrible detail by author Lazaridis—Viola takes on the challenge of documenting the suffragette movement, a project interrupted when the men return and their photographs lead her to think their triumph is a fraud. As to the hero here, it’s not a particular person but the bodies described in this gorgeous and devastating work: James’s and Edward’s in Antarctica as they compare the calories they use against the remaining food and end up eating their dogs; the hunger-striking suffragettes, whose emaciated, police-battered bodies feature in a fascinating project by Viola; the steadfast figure of Mary, Edward and Viola’s maid, who indirectly makes the expeditions possible but is taken for granted by the family; and the body of the Earth, which tries to kill the men even as it enables their fame. The frustrating, brilliant Viola is one of my favorite characters, and this book one of my favorite reads, in a long time.