It’s winter, 2010 as this novel opens. Twentysomethings Leah Nash and Niall Lawrence have no plans to fall in love. She has just come from an important interview for a course where she will study writing. He has just come from a wedding of friends up north where he’d watched the expressions of their love, and had thought, “Amazing.”
With their train hurtling towards London, Leah falls asleep on him, and wakes up startled and sorry that she’s been sleeping on him. There is an instant attraction, a fizz in the air. They briefly exchange stories: she’s a writer, and had been in Edinburgh for an award that would allow her to study writing and literature.
Their station draws near, and she makes an impetuous decision, offering a drink at her place. Life is on fast-forward, they kiss on her front porch, then on her roof-balcony, exchanging stories. He tells her he works on local radio in Kent in IT support. She says her day job is teaching, but at night she applies for every course, award and way of getting funding available.
A week later they meet again, and Leah tells him that she has got through to the next round of the interviews. Things are looking good, and things are happening so suddenly between them. As he says to her, “Sudden is an understatement. More like crazy. Bewildering. Maybe I’m that boring person, I like conversation in advance.”
And so begins a whirlwind-fast beginning to a relationship in Ice Shock by Elleke Boehmer, originally from Durban and now resident in England. The story is told in different episodes and seasons, with each next chapter headlined with a month and a place, for example, February, Hyde Park. In this next “episode” they meet Jules, Niall’s sister. It’s only been a few months, and neither can explain their attraction or the speed of this burgeoning relationship. Leah tells Jules that “it already feels like forever”.
And so the relationship progresses through the months. Hanging over them is the double-edged threat and opportunity of Leah getting the award and going away to do her course. But they talk about it and carry on. Then she gets the coveted award, and while with friends having drinks at a pub a friend mentions that there is a comms position at the Antarctic Survey. Initially reluctant to apply, Niall does eventually, also wanting to be busy while Leah is away, and he gets it. This new relationship faces its first real test. He will be away for 14 months, over-wintering on the ice, a length of time to strain any relationship. But they are determined to carry on, to keep what they have and persevere through the distance.
The larger, second part of the novel is their experiences while apart, from 2011 to 2012. Leah’s is away at an unnamed college or university in England (we are not told where, and I found this lack of detail disconcerting). Niall, meanwhile, sails to Antarctica, and his time in that white desert is like a second love affair. While desperately missing Leah, their connection strained by bad communication lines, timed phone calls. He explores this new world, as Leah explores hers. There is more than distance separating them now, despite their fervent promises to each other. He is looking at a “magic” world with a group of his colleagues: "[He] watched as the low sun raised a purple welt on the horizon, on the far edge of the ice shelf, an indigo-mauve plait rippling and knotting. And then he saw it too. The shapes resolved themselves, they became horizontals and verticals, squares and triangles, they turned into buildings ... a city of pale clustered spires.” There are many such evocations of Antarctica’s stark, uncompromising beauty beyond the passage described above of what is described as a “hemispheric camera obscura” in which the shape of buildings rise out of the icebergs. One of the pleasures of reading this novel is reading these descriptions of that continent, and gaining some insight into what life is like for those lucky enough to go there.
Wintering is a harder experience: the sun rises for an hour or so, before plunging the continent back into darkness, and Niall struggles with it, compounded by how difficult it is to communicate with Leah. Communications are sometimes so slow that even an email attachment can fail to download.
Meanwhile, Leah is having her own experiences studying literature, making friends and trying to fend off the not-so-subtle interest of a fellow student who makes her uneasy. She is immersed in the world of language, literature and ideas, and also frustrated at the snapped lines of communication between her and Niall.
It is not just poor lines that create a distance, however, or that their experiences are so different in their worlds. What is not spoken about is just as important and fracturing as the physical distance. Each experiences an encounter that they are unable to communicate to each other, and you feel the stretch and tug of a frayed string linking them.
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