Travel to Polar Regions

On the Ice: An Intimate Portrait of Life at McMurdo Station, Antarctica (The World As Home)

Format: Paperback
Author: Gretchen Legler
ReleaseDate: 09 November, 2005
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Rating:

Simply Horrid
It became a contest of wills to see if I could red the entire book. I read this book while in Antarctica last year and had to force myself to finish it. McMurdo is a weird place, no doubt about it. But somehow, while the author perhaps had the best intentions, it veered off into something that becomes rather incomprehensible. I spent over seven seasons on the ice and there are so many other stories to tell; the people, scientists, raytheon, projects, science, bureaucracy, idiocy, etc. , that would make a great story. This book is unfortunately not a great story. Buy another book, any other book.

Her visit was intended to research the landscape; her book is about the crazy people she found there
It's also home to a permanent station, McMurdo, and for a season was home to author Gretchen Legler, who tells of this season and those who have journeyed to Antarctica to escape life. McMurdo Station, Antarctica is home to freezing temperatures, months of nearly total darkness and regular near-hurricane force winds. Her visit was intended to research the landscape; her book is about the crazy people she found there. ON THE ICE is thus about an exploration few others will make: you'll have to read the book to live her discoveries vicariously.

Diane C. Donovan, Editor
California Bookwatch
.

Horrible...Sorry, Really Horrible
Gretchen Legler is too self-absorbed, too self-pitying, simply too selfish. I'm sorry to say this, but this is simply a horrible book. Her grant from the NSF Artist and Writers Program surely wasn't intended to fund this whining drivel about how much her parents don't love her, about how she found lesbian love in Antarctica, about tangental ramblings that meander into nothingness.

Surely, it can't be about the prose, either. This writer, simply, uses, too, many, run-on, sentences. . . the overuse, of, the, comma, is, almost Shatner-esque, in, a, way. Here is a quote. . . one sentence, mind you, wherein even she has to remind herself TWICE what she's writing about midway through:

"When the first bit of core, real core, not just mud from the surface, came out of the drill, says Brian Reid, one of the bearded, bright-eyed New Zealanders at Cape Roberts, telling a story over tea in the camp's galley - when the first bit of real core came out of that noise, yellow-engine-pounding room full of small, tight men with hard hats, gloves, and mud-splattered faces, when that first long roll of dark clayey material came up, and when driller Pat "The Rat" Cooper, who's drilled all over the world, when Pat himself brought the core into the drill site lab, people started yelling all around, "He hit the hard stuff, He hit the hard stuff," well, you should have just seen it - "Pat and Peter holding it and jumping up and down just like kids, just like kids, just like kids. "

Good Lord. That is ONE SENTENCE! Pages and pages and pages of this. It's maddening.

If you really want to read about life on "the ice," I strongly suggest Rolf Smith's excellent "Life on the Ice: No One Goes to Antarctica Alone," or Nicholas Johnson's "Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica. " Both are wonderful accounts of the mysterious land down south. Neither will frustrate you, nor do they care one damn bit about why some self-absorbed writer's daddy won't call her. Boo-hoo. .

Related products:
click image or link for details on these Polar Regions travel books.

	Life on the Ice: No One Goes to Antarctica Alone
	Big Dead Place: Inside the Strange and Menacing World of Antarctica
	Lonely Planet Antarctica