Literary Fiction
Icefields: Landmark Edition
by Thomas Wharton
Description
In 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slips on the ice of the Arcturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slides into a crevasse, wedged upside down nearly sixty feet below the surface. As he fights losing consciousness, a stray beam of sunlight illuminates the ice in front of him and Byrne sees something in the blue-green radiance that will forever link him to the ancient glacier. In this moment, his life’s purpose becomes uncovering the mystery of the icefield that almost was his tomb. Along the way, he encounters similarly fixated individuals, each immersed in their own quest: the healer and storyteller Sara; the bohemian travel writer Freya Becker; the entrepreneur Trask; the poet Hal Rowan; and Elspeth, greenhouse keeper and Byrne's lover.
First published in 1995, Wharton’s Icefields is an astonishing historical novel set in a mesmerizing literary landscape, one that is constantly being altered by the surging and retreating glacier and unpredictable weather. Here—where characters are pulled into deep chasms of ice as well as the stories and histories they tell one another—is a vivid, daring, and crisply written book that reveals the human spirit, loss, myth, and elusive truths.
This updated Landmark Edition includes an author interview with Smaro Kamboureli and an Afterword by award-winning writer Suzette Mayr.
More Information
Rights Information
World rights available minus US, France.
Reviews
"...careful dialogue, a steady pace and cool, subtle prose....through a skillful juxtaposition of scientific observations, dialogue and journal entries and letters, fact is successfully merged with fantasy....a well-told tale is definitely worth the pursuit, as both the doctor and Mr. Wharton's readers will discover."
"[Wharton's] touch is sure and light, yet capable of wide effect....this tale about a remote and frozen place opens out to become a searching contemplation of the work of man on landscape, and of landscape on man. 'Icefields' is a novel of crystalline beauty from a writer to watch."
“Ice, when it is touched, can sear the flesh: in Icefields it fires the imagination.”
“Wharton has ably captured the turn-of-the-century feel of rural Canada, complete with boosterism, a Victorian adventuress, and teahouses in the wilderness.”
“Wharton is an original writer and Icefields is an original novel.”
"Crosses Michael Ondaatje's 'The English Patient' with Peter Hoeg's 'Smilla's Sense of Snow'....Ironic, brilliant, and unforgettable."
“[Wharton] is stalking what, for a young writer, is rarefied game indeed: the playful ways in which people’s private mythologies just barely intersect, if at all.”
“Wharton reminds us again that, though we should attempt to look at nature on its own terms, we must do it in a human, loving way.”
“…an astonishing first novel, for it’s scope, structural integrity, consistent beauty, and language.”
Author Biography
Thomas Wharton’s novels, stories, and nonfiction have been published in Canada, the US, the UK, Italy, and other countries. His first novel, Icefields, received the 1996 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in Canada and the Caribbean. His first collection of fantastical stories, The Logogryph, was shortlisted the International Dublin Literary Award. He has also published a YA fantasy trilogy, The Perilous Realm, and an eco-fiction, Every Blade of Grass. Wharton lives near Edmonton, Alberta and teaches creative writing.
Copyright Information
Copyright Thomas Wharton 2021
Bibliographic Information
- Publisher NeWest Press
- Publication Date October 2021
- Orginal LanguageEnglish
- ISBN/Identifier 9781774390375 / 1774390361
- Publication Country or regionCanada
- FormatPaperback
- Primary Price 23.95 CAD
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- EditionFirst
- Copyright Year2021
- Dimensions8.5 x 5.5 inches
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