Customer Reviews

The Survivor

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One of the most perplexing novels I've read recently, "The Survivor" tells the story of a man who, forty years earlier, endured a doomed Antarctic expedition.

Alec Ramsey, the survivor, is sheltered in his professorial position at an Australian university, dealing with the daily squabbling among a variety of academic misfits (and their territorial spouses and lovers). Ramsey's lifelong guilt about surviving the trip is amplified by the fact that he slept with Belle Leeming, the wife of the leader of the expedition; his memories are haunted by the details of Stephen Leeming's death; and his equilibrium is unsettled by the news that Leeming's body has been discovered in the glacial ice. Although Ramsey acts like a man with a dark secret, it's unclear how much of his recollection is a result of post-traumatic stress and how much really happened.

Nearing the end of his life, Ramsey is haunted by his past and afraid of having his memories challenged; he fears "a change in the essence of his life, a change as absolute as death." He has lived with his nightmares for so long that he doesn't want them minimized or publicized by the grotesque charade that will inevitably result when the body is exhumed. Nevertheless, by the end of the book, as Leeming's experience is subjected to increased scrutiny, the reader (as one of the minor characters puts it) is not quite sure "what it was all about."

But Leeming's plight is only half the story; the other half is an extremely witty parade of academic caricatures (auguring the works of David Lodge) that lightens the seriousness of Ramsey's burden. Combined with Ramsey's self-mocking reflections, the tone of the book is both poignant and cynical without ever being depressing.

Given the success of Keneally's "Schindler's Ark" (the basis for "Schindler's List"), as well as his numerous literary awards, it's baffling and sad that this thought-provoking and pleasing book is out of print.