A review by pattricejones
Skating To Antarctica by Jenny Diski

5.0

Brilliant. Insightful. I almost skipped this, although I love Diski's other travelogue and her essays in LRB, because I'm not particularly interested in Antarctica. Or skating. But this isn't about that. Antarctica is there and very vividly described—the icebergs especially—but this unsentimental memoir is about very much more. Read it knowing that you are about to learn what it feels like to be someone who was violated by her mother and that, if your basic trust was not undermined in that way, imagining your way into Diski's mental space will be as much of an expedition as her voyage into the land of the penguins. Approach the book as she did the penguins, knowing that this is a being who may perceive the world in a manner fundamentally different, although exactly the same, as your own.