Forget the opening line hook, it was the black-and-white photograph adjacent to the first page that swept me into this cold harsh Arctic landscape. The image depicts a collapsed hot-air balloon, resting on ice, with two figures standing at its base.
In 1897, Salomon August Andrée, Knut Frænkel, and Nils Strindberg, embark on a daring adventure to reach the North Pole by hot-air balloon. Nils leaves behind his fiancee, Anna, who will wait for more than 30 years to learn the fate of his endeavour. There is no sign of their expedition until 1930 when, by chance, and with a little luck from the melting ice, a walrus-hunting boat stumbles across the remnants of a camp and human remains. Amongst the explorers’ ghostly belongings, are diaries, logbooks, and rolls of photograph negatives that house one hundred images. The items are stuck, frozen in time, and they might just hold the answers to the mystery of the explorers’ final days alive.
This book is the great adventure that we could all use right now. The prose rolls along like a deep-sea wave, steadily building momentum, splitting at times, crashing at others. It is not your usual historical novel; Hélène Gaudy has delivered an investigative piece of fiction that transcends the genre which traverses time like a stepping stone, shifting seamlessly through different years, decades, and centuries, all of which aid in telling this amazing story of human endeavour.
A World with No Shore is a deserved award-winning novel that leaves you with a profound sense of grief, longing and loss, but more significantly, love, dedication, and an adventurous spirit.
Reviewed by Samuel Bernard Williams
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Paris in 1979, Hélène Gaudy studied at the school of decorative arts in Strasbourg. She is a member of the Inculte collective and lives in Paris. She is the author of six novels and has also written some dozen books for children.
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