Customer Reviews

Four Against the Arctic: Shipwrecked for Six Years at the Top of the World

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I hate to write this, but I don't want others to make the mistake I did and pay $20 or more for this book. If you expect this to be a riveting survival story, as I did, you would be wrong. The book is about David Roberts and his research into a survival story. Details about the libraries he visited, the books he read, how he found various documents, his correspondence, his disdain for all previous efforts to document this story, his ability to read various languages, even friends of his family, etc. I only made it through 1/3 of the book. The rest of the book appears to be more about David Roberts and his trip to the arctic. I wanted to learn about the "Four Against the Arctic", instead I learned all I'll ever need to know about David Roberts.

It's amazing the story of four Russian sailors' survival on the sub-arctic island of Svalbard for six years isn't better known, considering it's probably the most amazing feat of arctic survival in the long and checkered history of arctic and antarctic exploration.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with many of the other reviewers here that the "signal to noise ratio" of the book is pretty low; there really isn't that much information about the sailors' story, and most of the book is really about the extensive research the author did and his own personal journey to discover the facts of the story. Unfortunately, very little real information seems to be available and the result shows in the final book.

There is no doubt that the author went to considerable trouble and did very thorough and extensive research to glean what little information was available, and the author certainly deserves credit for that. As a former researcher myself I understand the fascination of doing research and the thrill of discovery in ferreting out all the facts, but the end result here unfortunately is still pretty thin.

The author also spends too much time finding fault with the French academic's style who originally interviewed the sailors, considering that Roberts's style itself is a little too ponderous and grandiloquent at times, especially about pretty trivial matters.

On the positive side, however, I did learn a few interesting details of how the sailors managed to survive for the time they did, and I enjoyed that. For example, they were able to build a wooden hut from the driftwood that floats up on Svalbard's rocky shores. Svalbard itself has no trees, but what it does have is literally tons of driftwood. This is due to the prevailing currents which cause the logs that float out to the sea from Russian rivers to end up on the coast of the island. The sailors also had to kill several polar bears. That's probably the most exciting fact in the book although nothing else is known about it.

If you do decide to buy the book the best way to read it would be to skip over the sections about the author, the French professor, and most of the details of the research and just read the passages about the sailors, because there is some interesting information and material there. This would have made a fine magazine article but there just isn't enough information to justify a book-length treatment as the author has done here.

I kept reading, and reading, in anticipation of learning the story of 4 Russian sailors shipwrecked on an arctic island for 6 years, because that's why I bought the book. It wasn't until near the end that I realized that this book was really about the author and his 3 cronies hanging out in a cabin on an arctic island for two weeks, drinking fine French wine. From this book I also learned that the author reads French, is a Harvard grad, has a very large vocabulary, and a pathology regarding polar bears. None of this sheds light on the topic given in the title, thus a disappointment.

Svalbard island is about as far north as you can get and still be on land in the arctic. Its a barren wasteland, a treeless landscape festooned with Polar bears and Reindeer(how exactly did the reindeer get to the island?). In the mid 1700s a Russian ship, blown off course, found itself stuck in the ice near the island. 4 men went ashore and when they returned to the boat it had disappeared. These 4 men would spend the next 6 years in this wasteland trying top survive against the elements.

This epic adventure story is told very well by the author, who journeyed to the island to understand the struggle himself. The author tried to understand how these men made the most rudimentary tools, like a bow and arrow from driftwood. These 4 men had many run ins with Polar Bears and somehow survived.
An extraordinary adventure tale. An easy informative read. Half the book details the travels of the 4 men on the island while the other half is an investigative report by the author, exploring the village where the men came from and the relics that still exist of their journey and their life on the island.

I'm sure the tale of survival is interesting, but I'll find another book to tell me that story. David Roberts is more interested in telling you what a great researcher he is. He repeatedly tells you how "poor" his foreign language skills are (German, Norwegian, Russian) and yet he then proceeds to tell you how, with his meager knowledge, he managed to translate just as well as his professionally translated text. I've read probably 40 or 50 Arctic/Antarctic books filled with daily trivial entries, minute details, weather and longitude/lattitude readings - and I'll read thru days of that before I pick this book up again. Couldn't get past page 97. Then I skimmed through to find where he gets off his soapbox about his skills, and gets back to the story - but it was too carefully hidden. I understand that he was trying to weave in how the mystery was uncovered, and that can be fascinating too - I thank God for historians and authors who do and have done that - but Roberts just doesn't have the skill to do that without coming off as arrogant.

I'm glad I was able to borrow this book from the library because if I had bought the book I would have demanded a refund. The author devotes very little space covering the trials of the four survivors and devotes page after page discussing how he researched the book. Here is an example of what you must plow through:
"Through the Slavic Languages and Literatures Department at Harvard, I contacted a graduate student named Julia Beakman Chadaga, whose area of specialization as she pusrsued her PH.D happened to be the eighteenth century. ... Short with staight brown hair, parted in the middle, hanging loose about her face, Julia had brown eyes and delicate features. Though she looked twenty-two, she was about to turn thirty,... Julia had been born in Minsk, so her first language was Russian. After her parents moved to New York when she was eight, she learned English like every other kid in public school."

WHO CARES? I suspect most readers, like me, wanted to read how the four survived for six years in the arctic.
The author also devotes much too much space criticizing those who researched this sory of survival before him. I found this annoying and very unprofessional. In short, don't buy this book unless you're interested in reading about how he did his research. I gave up after page 75 which was about one-third of the way through. A more appropriate title would have been "How I Researched the Story of Four Men Stranded for Six Years In the Arctic."

I received this book as a Christmas present from my sister who knows that I love reading about polar adventures. DO NOT buy this book if you are wanting another exciting read along the lines of the Endurance or Karluk. DO buy this book if you like to read about what doctoral students do to earn extra money while working on their dissertations. (I'll save you the money and tell you here -- they do tedious research looking through the internet and databases and libraries for people who have the money and who then use their hard work to write boring books.)

As other reviewers have commented, this book is more about the authors search for information on the original hunters and the trying to locate their camp than it is about the original hunters. To be fair to the author though, the original event was a long time ago and originated from a small community in a region where few people were really literate, so the fact that little information remains isn't so surprising.

I found the author to be tediously pompous, with the annoying habit of taking every possible opportunity to tell me how many amazing places in the world he had visited, and how many amazing things he had done, and generally, what a great, smart guy he was etc etc. I am reasonably well read, and yet I had to consult my dictionary several times to decipher some of the more obscure words he (needlessly) used.

Saying that, I congratulate him on his perserverance and his willingness to spend a lot of time and money in tracking down obscure tidbits of information. I found myself caught up in the excitement of the journey to the island, and his writing style was sufficiently interesting that I almost imagined I was there myself.

I read this is a setting far from the wind-ravaged island (tucked up in a warm bed in suburban USA), and so this book provided great escapism. I enjoyed reading it, though people who want more adventure and less detail should probably look elsewhere.

While there are some interesting aspects of the story of Russian Pomori and the world in which they lived and worked, I felt my time committed to reading this was not well spent. I did however, learn something about polar bears, walrus hunting and Svalbard.

The book had more to do with the author and his investigation, than the Pomori (seacoast dwellers) sailors. Perhaps this book should be in the "How To" section of the bookstore.

If you are looking for an interesting Arctic adventure, check out "The Ghosts of Cape Sabine." This is by far a much better book; well documented and exciting to read!

I was looking forward to reading about the harrowing adventures of these men, but can't get past page 79. This book was more about a writer doing research rather than the survivor's tale. I often found myself reading a paragraph, taking a bite of lunch, only to bring my eyes back to the page and reading the same paragraph again. Hence, 79 pages read after having the book for 3 weeks. I guess I'll put this book up for adoption now.