Bookgazing

Following a sequence of mishaps Jack Miller finds himself left alone in the Arctic, asked to keep a scientific mission on track during long days of permanent darkness. Jack, the poorest member of the expedition party with plenty of class pride and something to prove, is determined to remain, gather useful observations and save the scientific mission...no matter what horrors may loom out of the darkness. In the process he hopes to earn respect from the missing upper class members of his expedition team; specifically a blonde haired, strapping young man named Gus, who Jack describes early on as ‘a handsome blond hero straight out of 'The Boy’s Own Paper’.

If you’re the kind of person who despairs when horror movie heroines go down into the basement, you will be screaming at Jack to get the fuck out of camp throughout Michelle Pavers’ Arctic ghost story, ‘Dark Matter’. Even when he comes to believe that there is a malevolent presence living near his camp at Gruhuken and is convinced that it wants to hurt him, he refuses to ask to be retrieved and abandon the mission. The days pass and his colleagues' return is continually delayed. As the weather grows colder, the threat of impassable pack ice becomes ever more real. Jack, Jack. What the HELL, Jack?

I think that reaction shows that I came to care about Jack. ¹ Not that I necessarily ever want anyone to be destroyed by a violent ghost you understand, no one deserves that...Alright, I’m evil, maybe I wouldn’t be so bothered if certain characters got eaten by a ghost. Still, I obviously felt pretty strongly that I would like Jack in particular to survive. How does Paver forge so strong a connection between the reader and her main character in such a short (just over 200 pages) novel? Well, in the first few pages she introduces him by having him write a definite statement in his diary: ‘It’s all over. I’m not going.’. Intriguing. Where is he not going? What about this night has decided him? I was already engaged by the end of this sentence and I want to know more about Jack. I’m encouraged to care about him, because he is interesting. I know, how unfair; in real life we should care about all the people, but this is Literature and shit is a cut throat around here.

Jack is further set up as an outsider character. In the episode that has provoked the outburst I quoted above he’s just met with men who have more money that him and more privileged educations. Several of them clearly sneer at him throughout their conversation. He’s an underdog in a classist system, where money makes your dreams come true and he can’t afford a round in an expensive pub.

From this meeting he sets off back to his rooms, ruminating on how his life has been derailed by his father’s death and the slump (The Great Depression’s manifestation in the UK). The slump left him unable to take a further degree in physics and instead he took a job at a stationer’s distribution factory, where it appears he will stay unless something drastic happens. All this social detail and the sad state of his rooms further establish him as a man thwarted, through no fault of his own. Then comes what I think is the strongest paragraph of the novel:

‘I’m twenty eight years old and I hate my life. I never have the time or the energy to work out how to change it. On Sundays I trail round a museum to keep warm, or lose myself in a library book, or fiddle with the wireless. But Monday’s already looming. And always I’ve got this panicky feeling inside, because I know I’m getting nowhere, just keeping myself alive.’

Here’s a piece of such open, simple emotion that it’s impossible not to empathise with Jack’s situation. On the way home he witnesses a body, possibly a suicide, being fished out of the river. As he sits in his grim room in a boarding house he realises that ‘This is the only chance you’ll ever get. If you turn it down what’s the point of going on? Another year at Marshall and Gifford and they’ll be fishing you out of the Thames.’. Right here, he takes his chance, despite reservations about travelling with people whose personalities and class are so different from his.

In just a few pages Jack has been established as disadvantaged, an underdog, and an outsider. He’s picked on by circumstances and desperately unhappy, yet honest and determined to grab his chance when it’s offered to him. That’s a pretty powerful arsenal of emotional hooks that Paver has given to her character to sink into the reader. Everyone loves an underdog right?

That doesn’t mean that Jack is a universally good, little orphan hero boy. He can be spiky and harsh, when he talks about other members of the team. He carries his own intellectual class privileges, saying he has no interest in mixing with people from his job socially and is disinclined to warm to those he deems stupid. Like all heroes from classic ghost stories he is sometimes frustratingly convinced that ghosts are all superstition and that no rational man can allow for their existence, no matter what kind of fear those with more experience radiate. He hates dogs!

I know, I know, I found that hard to get over as well, but over the course of the story Jack develops. He becomes friendlier and less prone to isolate himself as he bonds with Gus. He even longs for the companionship of others as the days grow dark and lonely. He gives way to reason on the matter of the ghost, allowing that it exists no matter what his cultural training says. He comes to love the huskies they bought to Gruhuken. Jack can still be prejudiced against people and never exactly heals his relationship with another crew member Algie, who seems perfectly harmless if a bit dim and rich. However, he does develop into more of a rounded human being, someone readers can empathise with without kind of wanting to give him a good hard slap once in a while.

I was charmed by Jack. I was quite scared during some parts of the novel. I loved the historical detailing of the period. I liked the clear and descriptive prose. I greatly enjoyed reading 'Dark Matter'. Yet, I can’t help wishing that I could see Sarah Waters' version of this story. There’s a certain layer of depth that would be present in a Waters novel dealing with all the same elements (ghosts, darkness, science, on coming war, differences in social class and gay love) that simply isn’t brought out in Paver’s story. As litlove said in her review ‘Dark Matter’ feels rather too slight to make it a great book. I agree; historical detail about social circumstance is included, rather than explored, which keeps the novel from being both a strong ghost story and a novel which illuminates the nature of humanity. While , Paver lets her ghost stand as a real apparition and shades social detail in around that story, Waters would have made the ghost story about the social, or character detail, allowing the whole period to be investigated in detail naturally through symbolism, subtext and the mechanism of the story. Paver’s way of writing this particular story isn’t wrong or lacking, but it’s not quite as suited to my tastes as something similar to ‘The Little Stranger’ (but set in the 1930s with a gay hero) might have been.

The gay romantic longing is another thing I’d have enjoyed seeing handled slightly differently. Perhaps from my description of Gus above you can already see where the relationship between him and Jack is going, although Jack certainly doesn’t have a clue for a long time. Alone on Gruhuken, during his most desperate times, Jack realises he’s in love with Gus (totally called it, shippers see things; they don’t just make up non-existent stuff). He has no idea if Gus feels the same way, or if he will ever speak to Gus about his feelings, but he wants to get it down in his diary. At the end of the book the reader is left with no idea whether Gus returns his feelings, although I maintain that their last moments together are pretty tender.

My problem comes with the way this relationship is resolved. Guss dies before Jack can even think about tell him how he feels. I mean I know that the story is set in the 1930s, but it wasn’t written in the 1930s right? The bonus of being a modern writer, writing historical fiction is that you shouldn’t have to enact the same fates that contemporary writers of the period would have had to put on people society disapproved. Personally, I’m not convinced there was any literary need for Gus to die, Jack and his team had already been fairly mentally and physically scared enough to keep a happier ending from appearing too idyllic and sentimental, others may disagree. If a happy ending really does seem beyond the bounds of reality, or artistic merit then why not a more complicated tragic ending, then sudden death provides? I’m not accusing Paver of anything nefarious, just saying that (especially after talking to litlove about it) I think Gus’ death seems like a missed opportunity to add complexity to the novel’s ending. How much messier and more interesting if he’d survived. What an interesting insight that would have given into that period of history.

Oh well, when you grow up reading Pat Barker you want every historical novel about men doing traditional manly things in the early nineteenth century to come complete with gay storylines I guess. Still, an enjoyable, creepy ghost story perfect for freaking yourself out with at night. Now, I must get back to reading Paver’s young adult ‘Chronicles of Ancient Darkness’ series.

¹ And that I took Victoria and Danielle’s advice to increase the scare factor of this book by reading parts in the dark. Thanks ladies, thanks A LOT ;)

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