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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
from ReadySteadyBook,
By
This review is from: White (Paperback)
"She makes all those daring young men of letters look very tame indeed." (Glasgow Herald)
White is Darrieussecq's fifth book and it is simply masterful; its detached, unhinged narrative is a joy to read - albeit a rather difficult, challenging joy. Such prose styling is probably the reason not that many people have heard of her in this country, flimsy poetic books by French authors not really being our cup of tea. I say "our" through gritted teeth, of course. I always have. White is a beautifully written book, it is the type of book that doesn't get written, and if they do, they never get taken on by a publisher as it would be far too risky, but in France Literature tells a different story. Thankfully. Each crafted sentence, down to each perfected caesura, is quite special, quite dazzling, and quite, if you would allow me, ice-white pristine. Yet again, in spectacular Gallic tradition, this is a flimsy but dense book. It has more literary oomph per chapter than most other books published together in one horrid homogenised lump - and the beauty behind this marvellous achievement is that Darrieussecq simply manages to make it all look so damn bloody easy, her prose seems effortless in construct. Isn't this what all writers should aim to achieve? I believe so. Set in 2015, White tells the story of Edmee and Pete, two engineers on a remote research station in Antarctica. Part love story, part esoteric thriller, part treatise on human emptiness and longing White serves as a vast existential canvass in which Darrieussecq delivers all the stark intricacies of individual emotion and reaction - and it is a stunning mode of philosophy. Take this wonderfully chilling snippet: "If black is the absence of colour, the backdrop to the stars, what's stretched across the frame of the universe, then white is the fusion of nothing." (Pg 111). It is this ethereal nothingness that Darrieussecq is interested in, both Edmee and Pete are running away from their respective tragic pasts, they pass through into a realm of whiteness, of nothingness, each possessing their own existential dilemma they try to cleanse themselves of whatever demons exist within. Both empty, both desperate, little by little, and out of nothing, they are drawn together. It is a nothingness in which sound takes on different meanings (mostly transcribed onomatopoeically by Darrieussecq from the crunch of snow under foot to the rattle of the generator in the camp), in which thought and memory hang heavy in the dazzling emptiness of the surrounding desolate landscape - a landscape that mercilessly cuts into the narrative, that takes over everything in its brilliance; a glaring landscape that dominates, as it has done for the last how-many-millions of years, each freezing shade of white slicing through the book on every page like an iceberg tearing through the hull of a ship. There is only one thing that dominates this astounding world and it is above, below and beyond: white. In fact: nothingness. Rather tellingly White, is narrated by the ghosts of explorers past whose varied lives where taken away by this relentless landscape; these omniscient narrators, of whom there are countless, oversee every nuance of Edmee and Pete's burgeoning relationship, they draw the reader into the story, they are as much the story as Edmee and Pete's past is, they are the landscape, the ever-changing ice-flow, the grim reality, the cold, the chill, the whiteness. Darrieussecq, again like Houellebecq, is interested in the fusion of elementary particles adrift in a universe bereft of meaning. If we view Edmee and Pete as two random particles adrift in this obfuscating universe of white nothingness then Darrieussecq's vision, like the ice particles that have helped to form it, becomes transparent in its tangible lucidity. We begin to see through this, otherwise impregnable, wall of white nothingness and without it slowly melting away it somehow crystallizes into a larger meaning we can understand - that we, in fact, can touch as well as Edmee and Pete can. Within this once pointless landscape Edmee and Pete begin to form a shared meaning, this fusion begins to form, it becomes plausible, it begins to fit the larger picture (which, one presumes, White is really about) and when there is a catastrophic power failure in the camp all becomes clear; proving it is worth hanging on to the bitter end of this stark, atmospheric, rather beautiful little book - because when two elementary particles eventually meet, after the initial fusion, there is almost always an obvious reaction that follows. Yet again Marie Darrieussecq has created a landscape that is unlike any other work of fiction published in the last five years - just like she has done with every novel she`s ever written. Part scientific reasoning and, to reiterate, part esoteric thriller, this achingly sad love story is a magnificent book that deserves more attention and, hopefully, this awareness, unlike the forming of the Antarctic landscape contained within it, isn't that long in the making. -- Reviewed by Lee Rourke on 12/10/2005
4.0 out of 5 stars
Between realities,
By
This review is from: White (Paperback)
"It is one long day: with a dawn; early light... the sun is coming up ... executing its circle ... dipping again slightly... rising a little higher ... during a good fifty human days, pink and orange." After that it stays for some hundred days until it slowly reverses the circles and dips into a dark period. This is Antarctica and the backdrop to Darrieussecq's extraordinary novel. Lyrical in its descriptions of the icy landscape, intriguing in its portrayal of the main characters, the author engages the reader, slowly but surely, in an exploration of human nature when placed into harsh environments.
The White Project - set sometime in the future - intends to establish a permanent European base in the centre of Antarctica, 15 kilometres from the South Pole. In preparation of the base, international teams of researchers, technicians, building crews spend summers there advancing the project. The story centres around Edmée and Peter - a radio technician and a heating engineer. Both had failed to join the first manned Mars Mission in progress and joined the White Project instead. Alternating in the description between the two characters' journey to the station - one by air and one by sea - the reader knows more about them than they seem to find out about each other. Expectations in the reader are heightened when the two protagonists finally reach the research camp. Peter is the most aloof of the team members, usually keeping to himself, his routine only interrupted by the generator's frequent alarm calls. Edmée, as the station's link to the outside world is more in tune with everybody, but wonders about Peter's reserve; he doesn't ask for airtime to call home. The plot is relatively simple, circling around the two protagonists with other characters' interactions acting as a frame to the central narrative. While aware of their interdependence for survival in this isolated place, all residents appear to isolate themselves and ignore safety rules. Darrieussecq's primary focus lies in the deep and changing impact the barren landscape has on the station's inhabitants. She evokes the hauntingly beautiful atmosphere brilliantly: white on white, horizon and sky merge; a whitish sun beaming down relentlessly. The line between reality and fantasy blurs; a dream-like state of mind can lead to uncontrolled and even dangerous action. The author introduces another voice, or voices, that emphasizes the surreal dimension of the landscape. The "We", the ghosts of past explorers, perished in the ice, and other spirits hover around the station and intermittently zoom in on the two protagonists; they have their own ideas about the events between them and how they should unfold...Will they hear the voices? A short, beautifully written book by one of France's most innovative authors of today. It requires slow reading so that every sentence can be savoured, hints absorbed and pictures formed of the landscape and the people who explore it. [Friederike Knabe]
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