Everland by Rebecca Hunt
One-hundred years after the disastrous 1913 expedition to Everland in Antarctica, a modern team is flown in to collect data on seals and penguins. They’re the first to set foot on the island since the earlier, doomed mission, but before long their decisions snowball into catastrophe.
After a rocky start, Everland becomes a gripping psychological thriller.
Everland’s dual timelines are tightly-plaited and the setting is fascinating, but it wasn’t until the second third that I got into the book.
In the early chapters, I wearied of the narrative’s repetition, over-explanation, and over-description. The modern names - Dinners, Jess, Napps, Brix, and Decker - grated, and seemed to undermine the gravity of the novel’s core themes and subject matter. And what an incompetent bunch they were. They lacked objectivity and emotional intelligence on such a scale, I couldn’t suspend enough disbelief to credit such a bunch of narcissists.
However, Everland is worth the early effort.
Under extreme duress, the disintegration of the contemporary team’s physical capability, acumen, and spirit is as devastating as it is compelling. The hallucinations and chaos that both expeditions slide into are well-portrayed and fascinating pieces of psychology. Dinners’ paranoia and flawed logic is harrowing, and the trekking scenes with the sled are gripping. I read late into the night worrying about Napps and Millet-Bass.
“The real dilemma, Dinners now saw clearly, was that they were being watched by something devious. It lurked outside the boundary of his limited vision, but it was certainly near enough to sense.” (264)
One of the most interesting aspects of Everland is its portrayal of the fallibility of eyewitness accounts and the way history is presented by survivors. The great gap between what happened and what was reported is the real tragedy.
I thought Everland’s short chapters, cliffhangers, and echoes of the past cleverly mirrored the landscape’s ridged terrain and eery Fata Morgana. Similarly, the characters echoed each other: each expedition comprises a crew of three, and the earlier personalities are replicated in the modern team - bringing the ghosts of the past to life.
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