Icefields

by Thomas Wharton

Book Overview

In 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slips on the ice of the Arcturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slides into a crevasse, wedged upside down nearly sixty feet below the surface. As he fights losing... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671002201
• ISBN13: 9780671002206
• Release Date: October 1996
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Sparse, quiet, pensive -- remarkable

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.

Ice and the imagination

One of the best fiction novels I have read this year. Storyline centers on the place of a dying glacier in shaping the lives of a handful of ice-bound individualists. The author is undoubtably well and widely read in the literature of what drives men (and women) with a certain monomania to cold abandoned places, makes a nice amalgam of themes embraced by the circle of NewEngland Transcendentalist, Polar explorers and other writers who see ice and solitude as the ultimate reflection of the possibilty of finite perfection.Aside from that personal interpretation, pages turn easily, and one is left with quite a few gorgeous images:"The glacier moves forward at a rate of less than one inch every hour. If I could train myself to listen at the same rate, one sound every hour, I would hear the glacier wash up against this rock island, crash like waves, and become water."

Prose that matches the beauty of the subject

This book is a magnificent expansion of what a novel can be. Those looking for an connect the dot plot line with traditional climaxes and conflicts may wish to stick to less challenging fare. Those who wish to explore an inspiring type of beauty and a character driven tale with great characters and interesting historical references buy this today. This is a debut that bodes very well for a promising future for Mr. Wharton.

The perfect book

This is the greatest book I have ever read.It fills the imagination to the fullest. This book is so beautifully written,and you can be sure that Thomas Wharton could be the best Canadian writer of all time. Don't pass this one by!

The spaces between the words are as important as the words.

Thomas Wharton's first book gets high marks for what is not said. Many authors throw words at a reader until at times they get in the way of the story. Not so with Wharton. His spartan use of words, leaving room for one's senses to fill in the spaces, truely relfects his subject: the stunning stark physicality of the ice fields, and the metaphor of the ice fields of the heart. I found myself wanting to savor each paragraph, each line; not to rush forth to the end. No skimming here for the reader, rather luxuriate in the craft of a marvelous first novel