The White Darkness

Title - The White Darkness
Author - Geraldine McCaughrean
ISBN - 0060890363
Publication Date - 2005

Plot - Symone Wates is a 14 year old girl who is driven by the obsession that her "uncle," Victor Briggs places upon her.  Briggs is going to find the location of where the world goes underground.  Ascribing to the theory of a hollow crust, Briggs has dragged his "adoptive daughter" down with him to engage in this fantasy... or madness.  Along the way we are introduced to some other characters who think they are going to take advantage of Briggs situation. Manfred and Sigrud Burch are con men out to take what money they can get from Briggs.  But when you are trying to con someone who is nearly insane and hellbent on achieving something that is not real, who will not let anyone stand in his way, you are likely to come up on the short end of the stick.

Symone, who is the protagonist is observing all of this from the middle of it.  As she is led farther and farther by her uncle on this wild goose chase, she confides in "Titus," a friend of her own imagination, to help her make sense of everything that is going on around her.  Finally she realizes that her uncle is mad, and he is going to put all of them in grave danger, no matter the consequences.  Her character has a moment of epiphany, finally, when she stands up to her uncle and decides to take a different path than the one he seems to have imposed upon her.

Critical Review - A fascinating book covering not only an interesting story between a girl and her uncle, but involving shady con men and other various subplots about the relationship that she has with her parents.  While there is the obvious abuse that is going on between her and her uncle, the author does a good job of allowing the reader to see that abuse is not just what someone physically does to someone else.  Abuse cannot even be qualified as verbal with harsh language.  Sometimes abuse occurs when a person ends up saturating a person with a lot of poisonous beliefs, ones that will eventually do them harm if they are not stopped. 

Furthermore, I loved the amount of history that was discussed within the basic plot of the story.  Being able to tie their adventure to the one that went on with Scott as he attempted to get to the pole and back, it was fascinating to see all of the connections made between the fiction story and the real one.

Finally the book does a good job with questioning the lines of what is real, and what is not real.  It can be said that Victor's faith in what was not real caused harm; but the author does not make this a universal truth.  He qualifies it by allowing Symone to have an imaginary friend.  At the end of the novel we are faced with the fact that he might have been more than the imaginary friend.  He might have had a reality to him, apart from what was in Symone's imagination.  Overall it was a compelling, well-written story.

Reader's Annotation - Deep among the Antarctic, a few brave souls are trying to discover whether or not there is a world underneath our own.  If your uncle, who was a father figure to you, was the one pushing you to go forward and yet you thought his theories might be wrong, what would you do?

About the Author - Geraldine McCaughrean grew up in a family as the youngest of three children.  She grew up wanting to follow in the footsteps of her brother, experiencing the world as he saw it.  When at 14 the brother would have a work of his published, it became a secret desire of hers to do the same.

When she finally had to choose a career, she originally decided on the teaching profession but it was too confining for her tastes.  Writing for her had always been a great love, enjoying the freedom to work with settings and places that she had never been to.  She writes the way she always wanted to, writing not about the places she had already been, but about the places she wanted to go to.
Genre - Drama

Curriculum ties - Connect this book to the Scott expedition to the pole.  Discuss the preparations necessary for such a journey, and what might drive a man to do such a thing despite the odds against accomplishing the task. - History

Booktalk ideas - Discuss the blurring of realities between fact and fantasy.  Is the character of Titus a product of Sym's imagination, or in the end is there something very real about him?  Is Victor Briggs fantasy something equally as real to him?  Which is the better fantasy?

Challenges - None

Why included - I found it in the Printz award winners section of my library and wanted to include it as it sounded like an intriguing concept.  I had read about the Scott expedition and while I found the uncles belief in an underground realm nonsense, the drive to get across the continent I found intriguing.