Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

A ghost story about the beauty and the terror of the Arctic wilderness

Welp, I’ve found another new favorite author…

Dark Matter, a ghost story by Michelle Paver had been sitting on my bookshelf for nearly a year before I decided the time was right to crack it open. My primary reason for delaying my read was that I knew the book was set during the Polar Night, and so I wanted it to be appropriately wintery outside before beginning the novel.

The other reason for my hesitation was that I’d assumed, based on the literary-looking cover and what little I knew about the book (that it was set in the 1930s), that it would be a demanding read in precise, scholarly prose.

I was thrilled to discover that was not the case at all.

Paver’s writing is a breeze. She does an excellent job of evoking the era in which her story takes place, but her style is simple, accessible, and entirely undemanding.

I whipped through this book. It is an easy, engrossing, and devilishly entertaining horror novel.

The story concerns an ill-fated expedition to a rugged island off the coast of Norway, called Spitsbergen. The expedition smacks of what one envisions such “National Geographic explorations” of the time to be: intrepid gentlemen’s club outdoorsmen who aren’t at all experienced in roughing it, but who have the financial means to make a go of it anyway.

The lone exception is our protagonist and narrator, the riches-to-rags working-class Jack, who is hired to the expedition for his ability to operate the radio equipment which will be the group’s only means of communication as they overwinter in the Arctic wilderness.

The vast majority of the novel is told by Jack in the form of entries in his diary.

Slowly, the scene is set as the group travel to Spitsbergen, and specifically to a bay known as Grukuken, where there is nothing save for a dilapidated shack and an abandoned mine. It is here that Jack and company will set up shop for the long months ahead.

I am drawn to books and movies that take place in snowy wildernesses, and Dark Matter does not disappoint in its portrayal of a desolate Scandinavian no man’s land. But as the land of the midnight sun gives way to endless pitch black, it soon becomes apparent that something nightmarish lingers in the darkness… some supernatural threat that will terrorize the expedition.

When a medical emergency necessitates the evacuation of his companions, Jack is left alone to temporarily hold down the fort. Assuming, initially, that the others will be back within a couple of weeks, he sucks it up, determined to prove his bravery and do his best to fulfill the expedition’s purpose: to take regular scientific readings and report them via radio.

His routine becomes his solace. But he becomes increasingly aware of the presence out there in the cold, frozen desert. And he comes to realize that the others noticed it too, before they left.

The longer Jack is isolated in the frigid darkness, the more creeped out he gets. Cabin fever and loneliness set in. And things get increasingly scary.

He is not alone out here. There is something else. Someone else? A ghost? A monster?

It lurks around the camp. The dogs can sense it too. It stands and watches from a distance.

And then it comes closer, closer. As the night gets darker and the temperature plummets, the shadow of a man that haunts Grukuken menaces Jack to the point of madness and utter fear.

Dark Matter is a compelling, addictive, and wonderfully creepy winter horror read. I highly recommend it to even the most casual horror reader, and I can’t wait to explore more of Paver’s novels.