The Collector of Lost Things

Jeremy Page

In 1845 naturalist Eliot Saxby boards a ship bound for the Arctic hoping to find some evidence of the newly extinct Great Auk. He finds a world of icebergs, Esquimaux, seals and seabirds. There is great tension on the ship and a mysterious and attractive female passenger. This book truly has something for everyone: adventure, romance, obsession and ghosts all combined with a very modern ecological message.

Extract

Then I saw it, beyond the waves, a sudden unexpected whiteness as hard and flat as quartz. It was the ice sheet, that stretched for a thousand miles beyond, but which looked from this angle as thin as paper. Against its blunt edge, the waves slammed ceaselessly and with great fury. The worlds of ocean and ice were meeting in a frontier of rage, as if the Earth had torn in two along this line. This was a place, if ever there was a place, where you could disappear.

Parallels