Carys Davies is the author of a novel, West, and two collections of short stories, Some New Ambush and The Redemption of Galen Pike, which won the 2015 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and the 2015 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. One of her ten top wilderness books, as shared at the Guardian:The Birthday Boys by Beryl BainbridgeRead about another entry on the list.
There are countless books about Capt Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910-13 bid to reach the South Pole, not least Scott’s own enthralling and almost unbearably poignant diaries. What I love about Bainbridge’s 1991 novel is the chorus ofvoices; the interlinked and overlapping first-person accounts of this most disastrous of journeys, as Petty Officer Taff Evans, Dr Edward (Uncle Bill) Wilson, Henry (Birdie) Bowers, Capt Lawrence (Titus) Oates and Scott himself all tell their stories. In all their wonder, idealism, foolishness and courage, Bainbridge brings them heartbreakingly to life in the cruel Antarctic wilderness.
--Marshal Zeringue
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