Review: Lansing, Endurance

[truepenny]

Endurance And Shackleton's Way by Alfred Lansing

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


[audiobook]
[library]

On the one hand, this was disappointing because it was abridged. (WHY?) On the other hand, I disliked the reader, so perhaps it was just as well I only had to spend 6 hours with him.

This book is an account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's failed attempt to traverse Antarctica. (Their ship got trapped in the ice, then crushed, and they sledged their three boats across the pack ice, then sailed them to Elephant Island; then, leaving 22 of the men behind on what was basically an uninhabitable island, Shackleton took the most sea-worthy boat and sailed to South Georgia--which, by all rights, they should have died, Google Elephant Island and zoom out until you can see South Georgia, you'll see what I mean--and then, because they were on the wrong side of the island, he and two of his men walked across what was supposed to be the island's impassable interior. So I guess he got some traversing in after all.

(Not a single member of his crew died.)

Almost everyone seems to have kept a detailed diary, so if you want to write a more realistic version of Robinson Crusoe, even the abridged version of this book is full of verisimilitude and details.

It was disappointing, though, compared with In the Heart of the Sea, because--at least in the abridged version--it's nothing but a straightforward account of Shackleton's expedition, ending abruptly as soon as the last man has boarded the rescue ship. Nothing comparable to Philbrick's disquisitions on Nantucket and whaling and other relevant topics. There was no apparatus. (I am the person who listened to Philbrick's reader reading all of his endnotes, so keep that in mind.) It was gripping listening, but ultimately not very satisfying.

Three stars.



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