Skating to Antarctica [Paperback]

Jenny Diski (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 20, 2005

'This strange and brilliant book recounts Jenny Diski's journey to Antarctica last year, intercut with another journey into her own heart and soul...a book of dazzling variety, which weaves disquisitions on indolence, truth, inconsistency, ambiguousness, the elephant seal, Shackleton, boredom and over and over again memory, into a sparse narrative, caustic observation and vivid description of the natural world. While Diski's writing is laconic, her images are haunting.' Elspeth Barker, Independent on Sunday

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"I am not entirely content with the degree of whiteness in my life. My bedroom is white: white walls, icy mirrors, white sheets and pillowcases, white slatted blinds. It's the best I could do."

Jenny Diski's obsession with the cool purity of white began early in life, when as a small child, she was taken for weekly skating lessons at the local ice rink. Between practicing figure eights, she would watch the Zamboni move across the ice scraping away the pitted, blade-scored surface: "It was all taken away in minutes and underneath was pure, untouched surface again, gleaming milky white, virgin, immaculate ice." This gleaming, immaculate ice stands in stark contrast to Diski's dark and emotionally fraught home life with two abusive parents. Skating to Antarctica is an unusual blend of travel essay and personal memoir, one that uses the phases of a physical journey to trace the trajectory of the inner life. Both journeys begin for Diski when her 18-year-old daughter Chloe decides to search for the maternal grandmother she has never met. It has been 30 years since Diski last saw her mother, and she has no desire to find her; is it merely coincidence that she books her passage to Antarctica shortly after Chloe begins the hunt?

Weaving painful memories of a childhood spent entangled in her parents' vicious sexual psychodramas and an adolescence in and out of mental wards into an account of her slow journey south, Diski imbues both voyages of discovery with a resonance that comes largely from twinning these tales. Like all polar travelers, she has the experiences of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton before her; instinctively she rejects the "heroism" of Scott's pointless death in a blizzard, embracing, instead Shackleton's pragmatic rescue of his stranded crew. "The will to live was not strong in my family," Diski writes near the end of her book; Skating to Antarctica, however, is proof that this apple at least fell far, far from the tree. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Only after learning the details of the author's upbringing will readers understand why she never contacted her mother after her father's death in 1966. Novelist Diski (Nothing Natural) was brought up in a London Jewish community, the only child of a father who specialized in confidence games and a suicidal mother who alternated between depression and violent outbursts. Both parents played sexual touching games with her, she reports, in this powerful memoir. Diski describes how she and her mother were evicted for nonpayment of rent after her father left home and how she endured years of unstable school and living arrangements because her parents were too self-involved to care for her. Diski was treated for depression in psychiatric hospitals and learned to value the quiet she found there. Woven into this harrowing memoir are beautiful descriptions of a trip she took to Antarctica, whose blank landscape Diski compares to the safety and isolation of the mental hospital. Recently her own daughter, Chloe, decided to search for Diski's mother and learned that she died nine years ago, a fact that has provided the author with some closure to the pain of her childhood.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Virago (January 20, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844081516
• ISBN-13: 978-1844081516
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 7.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,238,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating combination of autobiography and travelogue., August 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Skating To Antarctica (Hardcover)

Despite the tantalising title, I wouldn't have guessed how fascinating this book would be, even thought I've read some of Diski's excellent novels in the past. The author embarks upon a voyage to Antartica which turns out to be a journey into her own personal history. What could have been an painfully honest and difficult autobiography to read, the reading of this book is tempered by the delightful travel observations of someone who would have been happier staying in her own armchair at home. Although this sounds like a "women's" book, I am definately not of that gender, and truly enjoyed every chapter.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Skating to Antarctica- The Chilling Truth, January 29, 2004

By 

Elizabeth Frosch (Northfield, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Skating to Antarctica: A Journey to the End of the World (Paperback)

How long is too long to dwell on something painful? If it is a tragedy that has left your soul in shambles it may be hard to simply turn the memory away. In Jenny Diski's intensely personal tale, Skating to Antarctica, we read of the author's search into her broken past, and the journey she must travel to unveil the truth behind her tragic childhood. In this fascinating memoir Diski ventures to Antarctica to escape the realities that plague her heart. In an "all white, solitary and boundless" land Diski discovers that if she has the will, she can overcome her painful past and begin to experience the future (7). Skating to Antarctica is a brutally honest account of one women's exploration into a cold place; a land few choose to visit, a place too many ignore.
Published in 1997, Diski's memoir became a means of expression for her dispirited voice. Skating to Antarctica is the author's experience, a tale of her liking. "There are infinite ways of telling the truth, including fiction, and infinite ways of evading the truth, including non-fiction" (229). Diski reveals only what she wishes to reader, and we are therefore reminded that the book is an individual's report. Her story is unusual; however, her quest for truth in a world of uncertainty is common. Diski's bare writing exposes the significance of our childhoods and their effect upon our lives.
Facing "intolerable blankness" Diski addresses the period in her life where she endured the storms of depression, and touches upon a condition that is prevalent in our society today (190). Every person who picks up this book may not have been diagnosed with depression, but all have experienced feelings of utter loneliness at one time or another. Diski's vulnerability is revealed when she shares early on her desire to head north. She discloses a real helplessness in her opening paragraphs, and does not hold back or conceal these hopeless emotions. Instead, in her completely barren state, Diski shares her feelings and the reader begins to see how she pursues a controlled and simultaneously wavering lifestyle.
This memoir is far-reaching and impressive because it is truthful writing. Individuals who have fought depression or experienced broken childhoods will understand Diski's struggle to confront her past. By viewing this book as an honest report of one women's struggle to find answers, we can admire the author for her honest writing. "The choice on offer is the assumption that for thirty years I repressed curiosity about my mother's existence because thoughts of her were intolerable, or that, all unknown to me, I was contentedly, not to say harmoniously, living out a recognized phenomenon of the known physical universe" (24). It is with Diski's open tone that the depth of her pain is revealed, and the reader becomes involved.
One very impressive trait of Diski's style is her direct voice. Because the book examines intense and personal themes: painful memories, depression and guilt, hurt and longing, Diski is specific and concrete in confirming her ideas. "I've lived long enough to know it is a fact that most people find activity useful and conforming, but I am not one of those people; on the contrary, I find it alarming and alienating" (64). Diski's very clear and almost obvious style allows readers to peer into her soul, and search through the shattered pieces of the past, beside her.
Skating to Antarctica chronicles Diski's self-searching adventure. As a memoir, the book remains a means through which Diski discloses her thoughts, occasionally selfish or overly dramatic. Although Diski shows little appreciation for her parents, it is important to recall how deep her scars run. The few passages that describe Diski's self-pity are understandable and illustrate her transition into fully understanding her history. It seems only justified to allow Diski the opportunity to listen to her former neighbor, Mrs. Rosen, share memories of her as a child, and it is moving to read of Diski's self-discovery: "someone had been watching, it wasn't just me, myself and I waiting for it to end. I wasn't entirely a figment of my imagination, and up to that point, I could have been" (194). Diski's journey becomes a vulnerable account of the process of facing the truth about herself.
This book is a personal genre of non-fiction. Diski may travel to the end of the world, but if you are looking to learn about an individual's adventures in Antarctica-search elsewhere. The memoir shares not the explorer's experience at her destination, but instead the journey along the way. Skating to Antarctica was not written for the enjoyment of the reader. This book exists because it was Diski's method of breaking down the barriers of her past, and searching through the remains. Her story leaves you with questions, ideas only Diski herself can explain. For this very reason Skating to Antarctica captivated me.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Two Extraordinary Voyages In One!, April 1, 2004

By 

Jana L. Perskie "ceruleana" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Skating to Antarctica: A Journey to the End of the World (Paperback)

"Antarctica. And along with it a desire as commanding as any sexual compulsion that Antarctica was what I wanted, and therefore I had to have it." So writes Jenny Diski in her strange, humorous and often painful memoir cum travelogue to the bottom of the world. "The Arctic would have been easier, but I had no desire to head north. I wanted white and ice for as far as the eye could see and I wanted it in the one place in the world that was uninhabited."

Ms. Diski weaves two voyages into one here - the longed for trip she made a few years ago to the white land of snow and ice and a parallel journey into her own heart, soul and past. Her descriptions of her fellow travelers, boredom, group activities and various ports of call are often quite witty and caustic. Her take on the natural world, elephant seals, variety of birds, penguins, and the barren landscape in different shades of white are vivid and, at times, haunting.

Also explored in "Skating to Antarctica" is Ms. Diski's past - her suicidal and abusive parents, stays in psychiatric institutions, an almost lifelong estrangement from her mother and her own search of her "memory-hardened heart." The reader is saved from depression at these revelations through the author's extraordinary use of humor at her desire to bury her childhood memories under, literally, tons of snow.

Diski's writing style is spare, clipped and very effective. Given some of the painful content it might sound ridiculous to write that I "enjoyed" the book - but I did. Her descriptive narrative of the trip to the world's southern-most continent are fascinating - not just another travel book, and her personal revelations are striking in their honesty.
JANA