In a world of CGI-induced chills, a good old-fashioned ghost story can still clutch at the heart * FINANCIAL TIMES * Paver is the mistress of suspense, and the strangeness that humans can suffer from when exposed to the Arctic wilderness is brilliantly exploited in this period piece * THE TIMES * Deeply affecting tale of mental and physical isolation * SUNDAY TIMES * The ultimate test of a good ghost story is, surely, whether you feel panicked reading it in bed at midnight two-thirds through, I found myself suddenly afraid to look out of the windows, so I'll call it a success * OBSERVER * Dark Matter is terrific.(a) wild beast that grabs you by the neck * THE TIMES * The very best ghost stories usually concern the predicaments of the living rather than the return of the dead. Mission accomplished: at last, a story that makes you check you've locked all the doors, and leaves you very thankful indeed for the electric light.
And going mad in the ice is a particularly rich seam.Dark Matter is a spellbinding read - the kind of subtly unsettling, understated ghost story MR James might have written had he visited the Arctic * GUARDIAN * Told in the increasingly fearful words of Jack as he writes in his journal, this is a blood-curdling ghost story, evocative not just of icy northern wastes but of a mind as, trapped, it turns in on itself * DAILY MAIL * Paver has created a tale of terror and beauty and wonder.
Dark Matter is one of a distinguished sub-genre of frightening stories set at the Poles ( Frankenstein, His Dark Materials, The Thing). That feeling of wakening from cold and danger, from outside to inside: that deeply familiar, human ritual. The indescribable feeling of Christmas cosiness they inspire.
“Slowly, awkwardly, it stood and faced me,” gasps Ingleby, overwhelmed with fear and the “smell of rotten seaweed and… something else”. One shoulder higher than the other…” One of horror writing’s most powerful tropes (from Dickens to MR James) is the unidentified figure spied in the near distance. There are cliffs “the colour of dried blood” and stone beaches littered with “the giant ribs of whales”.Ī young chancer (voiced by Lee Ingleby) is left to man a meteorological station in remote, frozen Norway, going mad with fear as he keeps seeing, always at a distance, “a man standing in front of the cabin. But Michelle Paver’s brilliant 2010 story (here abridged into ten short episodes) about a vicious haunting at a desolate weather station in the 1930s Arctic is brimful with such self-loathing. “I’m 28 years old and I hate my life,” isn’t perhaps a line you’d expect in a prize seasonal broadcast.
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