Used price: $2.55
Buy one from zShops for: $9.14
List price: $23.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $1.70
Buy one from zShops for: $4.00
The novel begins after his rescue, in the office of a military psychologist assigned to treat the uncommunicative Lt. James Lockwood, sole survivor of the Royal Navy's secret mission to the forbidding continent. The doctor, directed to break through Lockwood's suspect amnesia and uncover the results of his top-secret mission, sympathizes with his patient's obvious trauma and recommends he be left alone.
Later, the case haunts him. "I am afraid that if Lockwood keeps his secrets (whatever they are) perpetually bottled up, they will become an incubus, like a dead albatross tied for the rest of his life round his neck."
The novel then drops back to the beginning of the mission, ostensibly a military weather station, but also an urgent, secret hunt to find uranium for Britain's nuclear bomb project. Meanwhile, a German U-boat, forced south by an Allied ship, discovers the station and destroys it, killing everyone but the commander, John Ede, who is badly wounded, and two men out fetching rock samples, Lockwood and Petty-Officer Ramsden.
Returning to the devastation, Lockwood and Ramsden realize their only hope is to reach the Antarctic Peninsula before it's iced in - 200 miles in two or three weeks. Carrying their helpless commander and the uranium rock samples will render their task even more hopeless. But Lockwood cannot abandon Ede and Ede will not abandon the uranium, so the two able-bodied men take turns dragging the heavy sledge.
Weather favors them, giving rise to hope. Each day Ede grows weaker but remains alive. Ramsden, more practical than Lockwood but accustomed to following orders, would abandon Ede to save themselves and their mission but Lockwood will not. Their streak of luck falters, fails, and the continent batters them.
Marshall slowly strips Lockwood of the accoutrements of civilization - bodily comfort, companionship, food, light. Isolated in the frozen dark, on a continent abandoned by all forms of life, Lockwood falls back on the primal instinct to survive. His mind becomes his only solace and his greatest peril.
The vast, majestic, terrifying beauty of Antarctica comes alive in this penetrating and sympathetic portrayal of a man thrown upon his deepest resources. Instinct and spiritual epiphany meet and mesh in a manner impossible in civilized society, a contradiction Lockwood must reconcile upon his return. But can he? And if he could, would anyone understand?
Marshall's plain, simple style, and attention to detail, reflective of Lockwood's mind, makes a perfect foil for the immensity of the landscape and the man's ordeal. Powerful, suspenseful and moving, "White-Out" succeeds on many levels.
Used price: $0.97
Collectible price: $2.00
Buy one from zShops for: $3.00
It is extremely racist, the aboriginal protagonist does not get identified either by name or is he given the courtesy of being referred to with capital letters. The author continues to refer to the Aboriginal boy, as "bush boy" until his death. He refers to the Australian Aborigines as being "primitive", but does show how they have successfully lived in a hostile environment for 40,000 years or more. They had a very complex social organisation.
References to Afro Americans as negroes who only undertake menial tasks further highlights the author's insensitivity towards any group that is perceived as different to his ethnocentric nature.
References to the Aboriginal naming of topographical features in the Outback of Australia, further reinforces this point. The Dreamtime legends of the Australian Aborigines support the naming of water holes and mountains or rocky outcrops as being the result of mythical fights, or where the Dreamtime Serpent slept or made his toilet, a far more earthy approach than that proposed by the author, who waxes poetically about "the valley of waters under the earth."
Further diplays of the author's ignorance of the Aboriginal culture is shown with the whole idea of the Aboriginal people's battle with death. What an absurd idea! What culture lives continually in fear of death or dying? The idea of a medicine man pointing the bone has an element of truth, in which the author has taken advantage and used on a young boy. This boy has his life ahead of him and is undertaking his entry toward manhood with his walkabout, why should he even think about dying, what has he done to break a tribal taboo? We are not let into this secret, so we can only assume that the author is using his artistic licence.(Tribe is deemed by some people to be a politically incorrect word)
If this is the only view that some overseas students get of outback Australia and the beautiful Aboriginal people then I would have grave concerns about using this book as a class room text. My students research these details, find all the inaccuracies and come to their own conclusions.
Used price: $9.34
Buy one from zShops for: $20.71
Used price: $3.50
Collectible price: $3.69