Cold Earth

[sawyl]

Sarah Moss' novel Cold Earth follows a small group of archeology students as they spend the summer excavating a isolated farm settlement on the coast of Greenland. Initially routine, the project quickly starts to spiral out of control when one member of the party becomes convinced that their actions, in disinterring the ancient dead, have caused the spirits to become angry and to rise from the grave. As if all this wasn't enough to be dealing with, the group's internet access goes offline shortly after they start hearing rumours that a virus is sweeping the US and Europe, causing them to fear the worst.

The events of the story unfold through a series of first person accounts from each of the six members of the expedition, with each following on from the other in something like chronological order. Each of the narrators has a strong voice and a strong character, but each account is of necessity both partial and subjective.

The first part of the narrative is related by Nina, a cooking obsessed English Lit student ostensibly brought along to provide a source of unskilled labour but more probably there because her old friend Yianni, the expedition's leader, has a crush on her. From the very outset, it is clear that Nina is a delicate and damaged soul. She almost bottles out of getting on the plane to Greenland and she has panic attacks on dig when confronted with the idea that she might be required to exhume human bones. Worse still, she struggles to sleep under the midnight sun and, when she does manage to close her eyes, she sees the history of the site in her dreams. Gradually, she becomes convinced that the spirits of the ancient Greenlanders are moving around at night, full of anger at the desecration of their remains.

The second part of the story is related by Ruth, a French-American forensic archeologist who is trying to escape from a traumatic event in her past. As she concentrates on excavating human remains from the dig, Ruth dwells on recent history gradually making it clear that the world of Cold Earth is not quite our world, even if it has suffered some of the same traumas. Wrapped up in her own emotional pain, Ruth has little time for Nina and her spirits. Initially, she things that Nina is just a spoiled and over-indulged woman who is playing silly games just to get attention. But gradually, as things start to happen to the site at night, she becomes convinced that Nina has had some sort of breakdown and presents a risk to the recovered artifacts.

The third major portion of the story is related by Jim, a Midwesterner and sometime Harvard graduate student. Jim is principally worried about the spread of the virus in the US, the safety of his parents and his sisters, and the vexed question of whether the plane will arrive to pick them up at the end of summer. But where Nina and Ruth have their respective ghosts, poor Jim doesn't have much beyond physical suffering and worries that his faith might be failing in adversity. There are hints, in his much remembered Waltonesque childhood that things weren't quite as rosy as he thinks, but even these feel like small everyday disappointments.

Much of the tension within the novel comes from the relationships that grow up between Nina and the five archeologists, and the question of whether Nina has lost her mind or whether the dig really is haunted — for, while strange things really do seem to be happening, their causes are sufficiently ambiguous to leave open the question of their cause.

The reader too, feels these tensions, especially because it is not clear how much trust can be put in any of the narrators or their account of events. Nina seems to be having dreams which show her the true past of the site. And yes, the expedition may have found things which appear to back up her evidence. But do they really? It's one thing for Nina to announce that a find is a chess piece but the professionals are doubtful and nothing more is said about it, so the find could just as easily be another loom weight as a chessman. Could the dreams simply be Nina's English Lit brain trying to impose a definite narrative on a series of events that don't really have one?

I really loved Cold Earth. I liked it's tight and focused plotting, wonderful female characters, moments of intense suspense, and genuinely creepy themes which I found played on a lot of my favourite worries: concerns about isolation, about the thinness of civilisations veneer, and most of all, the question of whether something is really real and really happening or whether its the just product of a mind that's breaking down under pressure. I was even disturbed by Nina's defence mechanism — curling up with a Victorian classic and limiting all conversation remarks to sarcastic quips — given that it's almost exactly what I do in a crisis. Definitely not a novel to read before bed.

ETA: I notice that Jane Smiley, in her review in the Guardian, warns that the book will induce bad dreams. I wish I'd known that a couple of nights ago...