Dark Matter (2010) - A Book Review
What We Leave Behind - exploring Michelle Paver's Arctic horror.
I had the pleasure of having Monday off this week, recovering from a metal festival. So, for once, I actually had time to read a book. And read I did. Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter (2010) has been on my list for six months now.
I finished it in a day.
Note - I still have not seen Backrooms, Hokum, Obsession, or any of the other myriad horrors I am desperate to get my hands on. Believe me, though, they’re on my radar.
Spoilers ahead.
Dark Matter is set in the late 1930’s. It follows a miserable young man named Jack. Jack joins a group of sickeningly posh people on their expedition to Norway- he’s good with radio technology, you see. So, despite reservations about his common manner and his obvious hostility toward them, the rich folk bring him along for the ride. It gets out of hand fast.
The thing with the poles is, when winter comes in, the Dark comes in with it. True dark. Months of blackness, in subzero temperatures, with no company save ruthless bears and blank sheets of endless ice and freezing water. Sounds like a barrel of laughs, doesn’t it?
This novel really picks up when two of the original five expedition members fail to make it to their isolated little basecamp. Nothing too frightening, mind - just mild inconveniences that prevent them from attending. But three men are not five, and it is a long Winter ahead.
Before long a genuinely terrible thing happens. One man gets appendicitis, and Jack must hold the fort alone, for weeks, or if it comes to it, months. That’d be fine, except for two things. The first is that Jack clearly has a great big crush on the sick man, and this is a bad place to have a preoccupied mind. The second is that he has seen a ghost…. twice. It is a strange, featureless figure, with lopsided shoulders. If you have been paying close attention, you might also notice it has a vague resemblance to a drowned corpse our protagonist spotted on the banks of the Thames during the novel’s opening.
So, Jack is left alone, apart from a handful of huskies. The ghost continues to pop up, and more and more our man panics that this Thing really wants to kill him. He starts to lose his mind, tracking the movement of an ominously stained wooden pole, getting lost in the fog, and boozing frivolously to calm his shattered nerves. All under near complete darkness.
He does briefly have a visitor - a Norwegian, one more familiar with the climate and environment. He brings Jack briefly back to sanity, but also reveals some dark secrets before his departure. Corporate greed, brutal violence, and a series of strange accidents come to light. You begin to put together a picture of exactly why this place might be haunted. Then Jack is alone again.
Among other things, the weather takes a turn for the worse. Jack’s companions have not yet returned. A storm traps him inside for days. His dogs disappear, bar one, Isaak, who he keeps close. Our man huddles in the dark, fearing for his life, half-mad with loneliness. He has read the secret journal of his man-crush, and there is no reciprocation of his feelings. No, there is only a horrible, gut-wrenching surprise - everyone knew about the ghost, and still left Jack there alone.
Eventually, things come to a head when the ghost enters the cabin. Jack escapes, but his only shelter burns, and, in pure fear and despair, he wades into the freezing ocean. Fortunately, just in time, his expedition mates have returned to rescue him. He is bundled into a rowboat, but That Thing That Walks In The Dark Needs Revenge. The sick man, Jack’s dream paramour, is dragged into the water, and nothing, not even love, can save him.
Years later, the sad young man who leapt at the opportunity for adventure is a very different beast. Traumatised, having lost a foot as well as the love of his life, he lives in sunny Jamaica, and grapples with the fear that maybe his companion isn’t resting peacefully in that black, glacial void. It is happier than you expect, but still decidedly grim.
So that’s a little synopsis! Now is the time to dive deeper into my thoughts.
Heavy spoilers.
The atmosphere is absolutely superb. The beautiful landscape, the vast array of majestic wildlife, it all clashes beautifully with the growing dread that builds as they arrive in Norway. There is an especially nasty moment where a seal is skinned, and despite being minimally described it is absolutely gut-churning. The dialogue is simple but the emotions are so strong in every conversation. You quickly get a sense for what everything is thinking and feeling.
The scares ramp up exceedingly gradually. They aren’t terrifying by any stretch of the imagination, but they are dependable. Old-school. A figure peers through the glass. A strange scraping sound echoes through the dark. Once, there is a strange mouldy smell. Simple but effective. For me, the novel’s tension is where the horror lies - the oppressive night and loneliness leave Jack with a truly grim existence.
I have to say, what we find out about the ghost does dampen things for me. He is, as I understood it, skinned, burned, and drowned before he finally dies. This is too much. Despite all this he isn’t viscerally frightening like the Crimson Peak ghosts, or upsetting and disturbing like the children in the Standpipe in IT. He isn’t even a particularly active as a force for evil, either. Just gives off really bad vibes. Sometimes that is enough… but if he’s been mutilated and shunned and left to die a horrible death then I need more than bad vibes.
This isn’t to say the book isn’t dead creepy though. Jack’s narration becoming increasingly strange and mad is super effective, and the Arctic weather is legitimately intimidating. There are some nasty visuals when it comes to the nature of it all - like the wet plum eyes of the dying seal, or the dead bird nailed up as a flag, or the blood-caked head of a dead-eyed polar bear. These are disturbing in the best way. Real shit. Not fleeting visions of a figure in the dark. Violence, plain and simple. Towards the beginning of the novel I feared things would go a lot darker - cannibalism, mutilation and blood-lust taking over as the sun disappears completely. It did not go this way, but the Feeling was there and I appreciated it! The Norwegians are all aware of the risks and they do not put up much of a fight to warn the Brits. Who can blame them? But we know - there is never a moment you expect things to turn out ok. No peace for the reader.
The settings are extremely vivid. London is as bleak as Norway. The ruins of an old miner’s cabin in a beautiful icy bay are as easy to picture as the fog-choked city of smoke. There is somehow a contrast and a similarity between the two settings and it really works. Subtly. Behind the scenes.
The characters work well. Simple but distinct individuals. Jack develops a good amount, becoming notably more likeable as the story progresses. I appreciate that you don’t necessarily like him off the bat - it’s fun when everyone is a little unpleasant in a ghost story. Also cool that he is gay and that this fact doesn’t factor too hugely into things - it is just a facet of his character that leads him to make poor decisions. It works excellently as a device to lead his actions.
I also appreciated that the book wasn’t afraid to fall back on paranoia and the basic fears. It is a believably upsetting scenario, even without the ghost. I know I’d be freaking out if it were me out there. While I do wish we had a bit more Nature fear, the building despair worked just as well. This doesn’t set out to match Dan Simmons’s The Terror and that is ok. Not everything has to be a complete disaster immediately. Some horror builds slowly, and painfully, and a lot of it is in your head. Skinamarink style - though a lot less slow.
Anyway, this is a ramble. I am confident I could say more, but for now I will leave it at this - this was a fun read, and I recommend it if you like a classic ghost story. I wasn’t left terrified, but I was left satisfactorily spooked. Good stuff.
As ever, thanks for reading,
Until next time,
H.E.
In my hunt for a book that will genuinely scare me, I kept seeing Dark Matter recommended as one of the best horror novels out there. So I finally read it and... I was disappointed. At most, I'd describe it as mildly spooky.
There was definitely an unsettling sense of dread running through the book, and the atmosphere was effectively bleak and foreboding. But I never found the story particularly compelling, and the reveal didn't have much impact either. The whole thing felt like it was building towards something bigger than what it ultimately delivered.
When I turned the final page, my overwhelming reaction was simply: "Is that it?"