| View Larger Image | Icefields | Paperbackby Thomas Wharton (Author)
| List Price: | $19.95 | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Washington Square Press | | Page Count: | 288 Pages | | Publication Date: | October 01, 1996 | | Sales Rank: | 1,061,929st |
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
Winner of: The Banff Grand National Prize for Literature The Writers Guild of Alberta Best First Book Award The Commonwealth Best First Novel Prize (Caribbean and Canada Region) At a quarter past three in the afternoon, on August 17, 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slipped on the ice of Acturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slid into a crevasse . . . Nearly sixty feet below the surface, Byrne is wedged upside down between the narrowing walls of a chasm, fighting his desire to sleep. The ice in front of him is lit with a pale blue-green radiance. There, embedded in he pure, antediluvian glacier, Byrne sees something that will inextricably link him to the vast bed of ice, and the people who inhabit this strange corner of the world. In this moment, his life becomes a quest to uncover the mystery of the icefield that almost became his tomb. Within the deceptively simple framework of a tourist guidebook, Icefields takes a breathtaking, imaginative look at the human spirit, loss, myth, and elusive truths. Here is an impressive literary landscape, and an expedition unlike any you have ever experienced. |
Amazon.com Review
This first novel begins with an imaginative and ingenious premise: a physician trekking across the Arcturus Glacier in the Canadian Rockies in 1898 slips and tumbles into a crevasse, where he beholds a winged human figure. The rest of the book tells of Dr. Edward Byrne's efforts to get to the bottom of the mystery in the ice. Along the way, he encounters a series of eccentrics, each involved in their own quest: the explorer Freya; the industrialist Trask; the poet Hal; and the slightly mad Elspeth, Byrne's lover. Told through scientific notes, journal entries, letters, and dialogue, this historical tale of the incalculable encountered in the mountains marks a promising debut. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 15 reviews)
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A Slippery Slope by Dick Johnson (Oklahoma USA)  4 Stars
March 22, 2008
Wharton has written a mythical story of the search for meaning; for what's passed by; for what's yet to come; for the love of one for another and the fear of it. This story has been written thousands of times by hundreds of authors - and will be - in the same numbers - probably for the rest of time.
This version, however, is short enough to not have the reader wallow in melancholy; while long enough to let you really sense the glacial landscape he chose for the setting.
I have no idea which of the characters I most identify with, but I would like to meet several of them - each for a different reason.
This isn't a difficult read, but it will cause considerable reflection about our obsessions and their impact on others as well as ourselves.
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More than a poem, less than a book by Heidi Kneller (Bellevue, WA United States)  2 Stars
January 05, 2008
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Fluff or not? Not really either
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---- Comments ----
On the day Bryne fell into a crevasse and nearly died his life changed forever. A man prone to obsession, Bryne's experience up-side-down and encased in ice would start him on a quest forever linked with the mountain and its ever-changing cloak of ice. His passion for things of the natural world only fed this new attraction and, over his lifetime, brought him back to the glacier over and over again - first to visit, then to study, and finally to live upon it. Times changed, people changed, the town changed, and Bryne changed, but his study taught him that the glacier's change was methodical and predictable. Bryne searched his whole life for the lesson he thought the glacier was trying to teach and for the precious thing it took from him that fateful first day without ever realizing that his obsession was robbing him every day of really living. The magic he was looking for was right in front of him the whole time.
Bryne's story is compelling, the characters eccentric, the scenery powerful, the time mysterious, and the ice . . . cold.
---- What I liked ----
There is magic in these pages - in the story, in the characters, and in the words. By choosing to approach this book as a poem, rather than a book, you will be more able to appreciate what this work has to offer.
---- What I didn't ----
This book needed a lot more editing before being sent to press. The writing, though beautiful at times, was generally sloppy, lacked cohesion, and did not deliver the story smoothly.
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Sparse, quiet, pensive -- remarkable by Jason Fisher (Dallas, TX USA)  5 Stars
December 22, 2006
Like another reviewer here, I came to Icefields after reading Wharton's second novel, Salamander. The two could NOT be more different! What they have in common is Wharton's astonishing gift for imagery, and for seeing (or hearing or touching or tasting ...) the mundane in completely new ways. I would agree with the reviewer who cautioned potential readers that the blurb is not quite accurate, but where that reviewer said that the novel failed to deliver, I would put it the other way around: the novel *does* deliver, but the blurb on the back cover doesn't accurately capture what that message is.
I found the novel to be a quiet, beautiful, and intensely inward-looking work. Almost minimalist. Again, different from Salamander. Remarkably thought-provoking (*like* Salamander). To me, it seems almost like a mirror image to Alan Garner's Strandloper -- though, since the settings are rather polar opposites (literally), perhaps a photographic negative is a better analogy.
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Passable by Jake Spooky (Atlanta, GA USA)  3 Stars
March 15, 2003
I bought this book on a whim, so I wasn't too disappointed upon finding it to be a fairly average and forgettable book. The prose is rather sparse, which Wharton may have done purposefully to match the setting of the novel. Some people might like it, but it was not to my taste.
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Passable by Jake Spooky (Atlanta, GA USA) 3 Stars
March 15, 2003
I bought this book on a whim, so I wasn't too disappointed upon finding it to be a fairly average and forgettable book. The prose is rather sparse, which Wharton may have done purposefully to match the setting of the novel. Some people might like it, but it was not to my taste.
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