The White Darkness Hardcover – September 1, 2005

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The extra information about the characters and writing process in the back of the edition I received was informative, and I was so intrigued about the settings that the author described, I did some research on them myself. I loved the two main characters, and I loved the way they interacted and spoke with each other. This book is written with a passion that comes out in the characters. Five stars.

I don't usually review books on Amazon because it seems weird to review content instead of the actual product (e.g., is this the edition of the book I expected? yes). However, if you haven't read this yet and my review could tip you towards buying: DO IT. One of the funniest, weirdest, smartest books with a YA protagonist I've simply ever read. You'll laugh, you'll cry, etc. I've read a couple times and given it to a number of friends, all of whom have also loved it.

Very good for a YA (I'm an adult). Sets the winter scene well.

Fourteen year old Sym gets caught in a whirl wind ride from London, to Paris to her Uncle Victor's true destination the Ice. Pengwings Travel Tour to Antarctica is controlled and sabotaged from the very beginning by Uncle Victor and the con man Manfred Bruch. Once separated from the others by timing and choice Sym, Victor, Manfred and a boy pretending to be his son, Sigurd, head out into the tundra to find a place called Symmes Hole. Uncle Victor lets his obsession rule his decision making until his dear Sym is left to cross the Antarctic tundra on her own on foot. Sym's quest for her own voice is mirrored in this quest for her Uncle Victor's reason for being. As Sym learns the truth about the constructs of her life she is forced to start thinking on her own, or suffer the consequences of her Uncle's madness. Sym discovers that her father did not go insane because he was sick, he went insane because he stopped believing in her Uncle Victor's quest to prove that the earth was hollow. Sym's struggle for literal survival is aided by "Titus" Oats, an explorer that perished on the Ice in 1911. Although Titus only seemingly exists in Sym's head he provides her with strength and the will to survive as she suffers from frostbite, starvation, a deep leg wound, and a lying partner. For the greater part of the novel Sym's "voice" is almost exclusively in her head. At the very end, after surviving a very real near death experience, Sym is able to speak for her self, and allow the voice in her head to match the voice coming out of her mouth. The bones of this story are amazing, and the plot itself is in-depth and very intense. The characters are rich and round. The descriptions are beautiful and direct almost to a fault. The narrative in the novel exists in the head of Sym. I had trouble buying into her character. The writing did not invest me enough in the beginning to care what happened in the middle, when it got overly wordy and very long. I worried that the only possible ending was that the whole expedition had been in Sym's head. Luckily this was not the case, but I feel that the novel would have been much better if half the bulk had been taken out. As I read I became very curious as to why this novel was a Michael Printz Gold Medal winner. I give it a 5 because I was inclined by the end to worry about poor Sym and whether she would get to see her mum again.

This book has made me fascinated in the history of Antarctica in a way that I never would have been otherwise. It's very well-written and I've shared it with many a high school English teacher. I definitely recommend this YA read.

Great narrative voice, excellent writing, very suspenseful. Loved that character had a disability but the story didn't focus much on it.

I couldn't put this book down. The writing was excellent. Ms. McCaughrean is a very gifted writer. So glad I read her book.

The White Darkness was purchased for our daughter. This book was on a list as a recommended reading through our daughter's school in which she was required to write a report on during the summer. She thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and would recommend this book. The seller provided fast delivery, the product was exactly as described, and I would recommend seller to others.

Geraldine McCaughrean, whose  Not the End of the World , a subversive way of looking at Noah's Flood, I had absolutely adored, here turns her pull-few-punches gaze on a story of the Antarctic, marrying revisitings of Scott's expedition with the story of a young girl, and a fascination/obsession with Titus Oates, from that expedition, and her own, much darker trip to the Antarctic.I am devoted to books with Polar, frozen settings, and I do very much like fine writing for teens which does not patronise, dumb down, or underestimate the intelligence of that audience. As McCaughrean is definitely a writer without an ounce of `talking down to' in her writing, and is moreover a writer who makes any reader - teen or far beyond the YA world, work and pay attention whilst at the same time being driven on by `what happens next and to whom' urgency, I really expected to love this bookAnd I did and I didn't. The central character, Sym, is intelligent, wounded, rather a loner, and out of step within the world of her peers, who appear to be an unlikeable, superficial, tiresome bunch,Sym is extremely likeable, an attractive combination of maturity and integrity but despite some sort of emotional wisdom, she is extremely innocent of `street smarts', and therefore extremely vulnerable to those without the integrity she has. And that is pretty well every character in the book.She has a rich inner fantasy life. Her father died when she was quite young, and she has constructed a strong inner male hero, protector, guide, who teeters between father figure, someone SHE protects, and possible future lover. This fantasy figure is Titus Oates, always in her head and heart, with whom she has imagined conversations, whom she goes to for advice - he almost functions as an aspect of her best self. She is extremely complex, and absolutely out of step with a more simplistic, unsubtle world, especially a world filled with people on the make.I failed to completely love this book in part because the situations Sym was manipulated into were very distressing indeed to an adult reader. I suspect the intended audience may have slightly tougher skins, certainly those that are possessed of street smarts and affect a world-weary demeanour. I found myself slightly shocked that this is a book for children. But it can't be denied that the world contains plenty of people who DO prey on, and exploit children, in many different ways.McCaughrean tells her story sensitively and some of my sense of disturbance, paradoxically comes because she is so light touch. She trusts the reader's sensibility. . It is a book, apart from Sym herself and her imaginary presence of Titus Oates, pretty much without another major redeeming or redeemable character, whether adult or child/teen.Sym herself is the only light, brightness. The frozen, indifferent, beautiful, treacherous landscape is a major character in this.The only concession to the age of her audience, I felt, was the ending. Not quite one which works for this reader, I felt the author had pulled a little back from reality, allowed a couple of coincidences too far, to provide something a little more palatable, a little less bleak Not the End of the World

This book grips from the outset. McCaughrean skilfully enables the reader to see more than the narrator, and tension quickly mounts as we wonder at Uncle Victor`s motives. The imaginary dialogue between the narrator and Titus Oates is by turns funny, sad and touching and cleverly weaves parts of the story of Scott`s doomed 1911 expedition into the narrative. Once we reach the Antarctic, the prose flowers into vivid poetic descriptive evocations which finely balance the grip of the story. The unhinged vision at the centre of the tale is hard to take seriously, but the quality of the writing renders this ultimately irrelevant. Read this book.

Wow. This is an awesome story. Pre-Hunger Games this is way more interesting and way more exciting and requires a lot more input from the reader. As far as pre-teen novels go this is the one I will be recommending above all others.

Arrived early. Pleased.

I've been reading White Darkness with my Year 8 class and was unsure how they would like it. To start off the boys were rather negative but they have grown to like it as the pace of the story picks up. The literary quality of the writing is superb and McCaughrean's use of imagery and her wit make it a very enjoyable read. I have no doubt that people will be reading her work for generations to come.