'Sun at Midnight'
Author: Rosie Thomas
Publisher: HarperCollins / 2004
Pages: 488
Her mother had been an eminent scientist who did sterling work at some risk to herself in Antarctica.
But she, Alice Peel, the daughter, preferred to live a quiet life in Oxford.
Then everything fell apart. Her relationship collapsed and her mother was taken seriously ill.
Dutifully, Alice accepted then to join a scientific expedition to Antarctica instead of her mother, even though this would be a novel experience for her.
She thus found herself sharing restricted space in a claustrophobic research station meeting people she had never met before in a harsh silver and ice-blue world, cut off from the rest of the world where for months the sun doesn't rise at all.
But despite this hard environment love still managed to find a way in.
In a completely unexpected way.
It might seem difficult if not impossible to structure a novel in such an impossible environment where a slight change in the weather may mean people being shut in for days and weeks on end.
But Thomas manages to highlight the different personalities and their interaction with the environment and with each other.
Then the unexpected happens and everything is thrown in the mix.
But love, once again, comes out in triumph.
The author of this book, Rosie Thomas, has the same name as a famous singer and composer who was born in Detroit. But Rosie Thomas the author is not her real name.
Her real name is Janey King and she was born in 1947 in Denbigh, Wales. She is a British journalist and romance novelist, the author of 20 novels which rank among the top 100 authors whose books are borrowed from UK libraries. She twice won the Romantic Novel of the Year award.
After graduating from university she married a literary agent and they had two children. Then in the mid-1990s they divorced and she became an avid mountaineer. On her 60th birthday she climbed the Eiger in Switzerland.
Among her achievements she worked in a research station in Antarctica. Hence this book.