Dark Matter: the gripping ghost story from the author of WAKENHYRST

Product Information

One of the underlying themes of the story is hostility both imagined and real. The whole story is in the context of a diary kept by our hero and so we get only his opinion, his viewing of the situation but Paver enables us to see his mistakes and misunderstandings and misrepresentations because, when all else is said and done, he is an honest man. Why did I read this book: After hitting so many duds and meh reads lately, I decided that I was really in the mood for something dark and terrifying. I had completely forgotten that I had Dark Matter on my shelf, and then I remembered how much Ana loved the book when she read it last year. It seemed like the perfect time to give the book a read. I’ve been in the mood for a good ghost story for a while, and when another book blogger told me that Michelle Paver’s novel Dark Matter was not only suspenseful and spooky, but also set in a wild remote place, I didn’t need any more persuasion! And I must say that it lived up to all my expectations. Michelle’s hotly-anticipated ghost story, DARK MATTER, has been published in the UK to massive critical acclaim.

Dark Matter: A Ghost Story also enjoyed Readers who enjoyed Dark Matter: A Ghost Story also enjoyed

This is pacey, readable historical fiction with a good sense of period and atmosphere. I enjoyed Pearce’s narration, and the one-upmanship type of relationship with his brother adds an interesting dimension to the expedition dynamics. However, I never submitted sufficiently to Paver’s spell to find anything particularly scary. I’ll try again with her other ghost story, Dark Matter, about an Arctic expedition from the same time period. Paver is the mistress of suspense” agrees Amanda Craig in her review of children’s books for Halloween in The Times. “The strangeness that humans can suffer from when exposed to the Arctic wilderness is brilliantly exploited in this period piece.”

The skipper of the Isbjorn, Mr Ericsson, is reluctant to take them to the bay they have chosen, Gruhuken, and wants to drop them off ‘forty miles short’.....he will not say why. The workers on the ship, helping to assemble the camp will not stay overnight........ there are rumours and discontentment. Paver is the mistress of suspense. The strangeness that humans can suffer from when exposed to the Arctic wilderness is brilliantly exploited in this period piece.” Paver develops these tensions very well. Then the gradual development of a sense of haunting, initially denied by the empirical Stephen:

Welcome to the home of Chronicles of Ancient Darkness!

What do I mean by wrong? Well I don’t mean ghosts. Not in the sense of disembodied spirits, I don’t believe in them. […] But energy, now. Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so isn’t it at least possible that some kind of energy—perhaps magnetic, or even some force of emotion—may have lingered here for years? And perhaps—perhaps there’s something about me that makes me a sort of physical medium for that energy: like a battery, or a lightning rod? Author Michelle Paver was another wonder to me. Her knowledge of life in the Arctic is so extensive I had to find out more about her and read that Michelle traveled to Finland, Greenland, Sweden, Norway, Arctic Canada, and the Carpathian Mountains. She has slept on reindeer skins, swum with wild killer whales, and gotten nose to nose with polar bears and wolves to research her books. That explained why her book was so realistic and believable. Paver includes a number of references to the author Robert Louis Stevenson. Firstly, the Stevenson screen is an instrument designed by Robert Louis Stevenson's father. Secondly, the character Gus Balfour's namesake comes from Robert Louis Stevenson's mother's maiden name; Balfour. This name is also shared by Stevenson's protagonist of his novel Kidnapped. However, the setting on its own would not be enough. Paver creates a small cast, well drawn, but focuses on one man and his difficult realtionship with his conceited older brother. Through this narration, we become immersed not only in the sibling relationship but also the harsh conditions of the expedition. Our group is trying to reach to summit of the yet unconquered third highest peak of the Himalayas, retracing the steps of a previously ill-fated team. In the interim, she “took a bit of a wrong turn”, becoming a biotechnological patents lawyer for 13 years. “I thought, ‘I’m quite good at exams, why don’t I do law for a couple of years and maybe I’ll be published by then?’” After years of trying to write in the evenings and at weekends, and not really wanting to be a lawyer at all, she “had to jump off the treadmill”. She resigned without a book deal. During her six months’ notice period, she landed one. “My earnings fell off a cliff. I went from six figures to earning less than a student teacher. But it was unbelievable how much it felt like the right thing. I didn’t have to dress up in Armani trouser suits, I could just wear jeans.”

In 1935 Dr. Stephen Pearce and his brother Kits are part of a five-man mission to climb the most dangerous mountain in the Himalayas, Kangchenjunga. Thirty years before, Sir Edmund Lyell led an ill-fated expedition up the same mountain: more than one man did not return, and the rest lost limbs to frostbite. “I don’t want to know what happened to them. It’s in the past. It has nothing to do with us,” Dr. Pearce tells himself, but from the start it feels like a bad omen that they, like Lyell’s party, are attempting the southwest approach; even the native porters are nervous. And as they climb, they fall prey to various medical and mental crises; hallucinations of ghostly figures on the crags are just as much of a danger as snow blindness.

Dark Matter, Clowns at Midnight, Damage Time and Version 43 Dark Matter, Clowns at Midnight, Damage Time and Version 43

urn:lcp:darkmatter0000pave:epub:d49b44ed-1267-4568-94de-6110f426f5ad Foldoutcount 0 Identifier darkmatter0000pave Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t98748h54 Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781409123781 Michelle Paver is most famous for writing a series of fantasy novels for younger readers - which I have not read - and Dark Matter, subtitled A Ghost Story, is her first novel for adult readers. The ghost in question is a member of the previous expedition Arthur Ward. He was an outsider, not being upper class like the rest of the team. He fell and was left to die on the mountainside. Paver builds the tension well, piece by piece using the surroundings very effectively. The contrast with the Sherpas is telling. They respect and fear the mountain and display a great deal more common sense than their western paymasters. Freud argues that the writer can achieve the uncanny by;Having really enjoyed, “Dark Matter,” I was keen to read this, new novel, by Michelle Paver. Normally, I dislike comparing an author’s novels, but there is much to compare in, “Thin Air,” to “Dark Matter.” Both deal with remote places and extreme temperatures. Both are, essentially, ghost stories…