To The Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey

My book group doesn’t really have any rules, but there are a couple that people have voiced support for. I would love if we implemented a 350-page-maximum rule, and there are others who think we should only recommend books we’ve already read. I am vehemently anti this rule, because my choices for book group are broadly made for one reason: because I own them and want to read them, but not quite enough to do so off my own bat.

Step forward To The Bright Edge of the World (2016) by Eowyn Ivey, which I got as a review copy a few years ago. I’d read and loved The Snow Child – I say ‘loved’, but in fact I found it so emotionally vivid and painful that I had to stop for about six months in the middle. But Ivey was a brilliant storyteller and I wanted to try her again.

And then the book arrived. And it was enormous. And historical. And about icy exploration. That is not a list of ingredients that warms my heart, even despite Claire’s very enthusiastic review. So – book group it was!

There are two main characters who narrate To The Bright Edge of the World, and they don’t spend a lot of time together on the page despite being married. Colonel Allen Forrester has been sent off to the uncharted territories of Alaska with a band of men in 1885, tasked with reporting back. For a while it looks like his wife Sophie might join him, and I was quite excited about seeing a woman doing something adventurous. As it turns out, though, she’s pregnant and she stays behind – so the novel is told through their diaries and occasional letters.

Look, I’m not that interested in icy exploration. I keep calling it that because I don’t know what we call non-polar exploration in the ice… frontier exploration? And Ivey writes very vividly about this trip, taking us inch by frustrating inch along their journey. I did find Forrester a very warm, lovable character, unafraid to express how deeply he loves and admires his new wife – as well as his affections and frustrations with the various other men on his trip. But I suppose I’d have found him a more enjoyable character in a drawing room than in a makeshift camp. I will confess that I ended up reading some of these sections very quickly, not necessarily picking up every single detail…

And when I say ‘exploration’, I should add that they weren’t the first people there. Along the way they encounter several native Alaskans, and it’s interesting to read the meeting of cultures – particularly when Alaskan myth and miracle is woven into the novel. And one of the men strikes up a very close relationship with a native Alaskan. Like many historical novels, twenty-first-century morality guides which characters are admirable. I suspect we wouldn’t find many explorers of the time who were quite so considerate to native Alaskans, nor who had such feminist sensibilities.

Speaking of, mine were rather more invested in Sophia back home. She is a brilliant mixture of intelligent determination and uncertainty – keen to face life bravely, but also young and naive. She has a lot to contend with in the pregnancy (and there are some heartbreaking sections where he writes joyfully about her pregnancy while she is finding it terrifying and difficult), and she has plenty to content with in the patriarchal society. And then her interest in photography blooms. That’s much more up my street than exploration! I loved reading about her processes, and her intent attempts to capture stunning wildlife photography.

Ultimately, and unsurprisingly for me, I found the novel wildly too long. It would have been a better novel with at least a hundred pages shaved off it. Unless sections of it were meant to reflect the wearying, slow process of getting through inhospitable Alaska?

But I enjoyed it nevertheless. The strength of it is the characters. And for those who like exploration, that will be an addition rather than an obstacle. In fact, just go over and read Claire’s review? I didn’t have quite her experience with it, but I got plenty vicarious enjoyment from her enjoyment of it. And if I were a rating man, I’d give it a solid 7/10 myself.