'A wonderful book: Nancy Campbell is a fine storyteller with a rare
physical intelligence. The extraordinary brilliance of her eye
confers the reader a total immersion in the rimy realms she
explores. Glaciers, Arctic floe, verglas, frost and snow - I can
think of no better or warmer guide to the icy ends of the Earth'
Dan Richards, author of Climbing Days A vivid and perceptive book
combining memoir, scientific and cultural history with a bewitching
account of landscape and place, which will appeal to readers of
Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin and Olivia Laing. Long captivated
by the solid yet impermanent nature of ice, by its stark, rugged
beauty, acclaimed poet and writer Nancy Campbell sets out from the
world's northernmost museum - at Upernavik in Greenland - to
explore it in all its facets. From the Bodleian Library archives to
the traces left by the great polar expeditions, from remote Arctic
settlements to the ice houses of Calcutta, she examines the impact
of ice on our lives at a time when it is itself under threat from
climate change. The Library of Ice is a fascinating and beautifully
rendered evocation of the interplay of people and their environment
on a fragile planet, and of a writer's quest to define the value of
her work in a disappearing landscape. 'The writer and poet offers
reflections on ice and snow that draw on art, science and
history... a dreamlike book.' - The Guardian 'It is a sparkling and
wonderful meditation on a substance we must cherish' - The
Independent 'It is a pleasant brew infused with elements not only
of travel and history, but also of memoir and personal reflection'-
Literary Review 'Ms Campbell, a penniless but intrepid traveller,
braves miserable bus journeys, freezing rain, dark and intense
cold, but still manages to write rapturously of the beauties of the
Arctic'- The Economist 'The Library of Ice instantly transported me
elsewhere... This luminous book is both beautifully written and
astute in its observations, turning the pages of time backwards and
revealing, like the archive of the earth's climate stored in layers
of solidified water, the embedded meanings of the world's icy
realms. It is a book as urgently relevant as it is wondrous' Julian
Hoffman, author of The Heart of Small Things 'An extraordinary work
not only for the perspicacity and innate experience of the author
who leads the reader carefully across intertwined icy tracks of
crystallised geographics, melting myths and frozen exploration
histories, but through her own tender diagnostics of what reading
ice can show us in these times ... Perilous in its scope, exacting
in its observation, wild in intellect, The Library of Ice captures
the reader's attention almost as if caught in ice itself'
MacGillivray, author of The Nine of Diamonds: Sorroial Mordantless
'This is travel writing to be treasured. A biography of ice, the
element that has another life, with hard facts thawed and warmed by
a poet's voice. Campbell's writing is companionable, curious,
deeply researched and with no bragging about the intrepidity that
has taken her between winter-dark Greenland, Polar libaries,
Scottish curling rinks, Alpine glaciers and Henry Thoreau's pond at
Walden' Jasper Winn, author of Paddle 'The is not one inelegant or
flabby line in the 300 pages of the best writing I have relished
this year. W.G. Sebald would have loved, envied and recognised a
fellow spirit.' Horatio Clare, The Spectator
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