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Short Blacks
Regions of Thick-Ribbed Ice
They say that tourist ships to Antarctica, even more than ordinary human conveyances, are loaded down with aching hearts. Deceived wives and widowers, men who've never been loved and don't know why, Russian crew forced to leave their children behind for years at a time � And then there are the married couples: how calm the old ones, how eager the new! � but isn't a couple the greatest mystery of all?
Regions of Thick-Ribbed Ice is the tale of a journey to Antarctica aboard the Professor Molchanov. With unmatched eloquence, Helen Garner spins a tale of ships, icebergs, tourism, time, photography and the many forms of desolation.
Regions of Thick-Ribbed Ice is the tale of a journey to Antarctica aboard the Professor Molchanov. With unmatched eloquence, Helen Garner spins a tale of ships, icebergs, tourism, time, photography and the many forms of desolation.
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
12 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
About the author
Helen Garner
58Ìýbooks1,137ÌýfollowersHelen Garner was born in Geelong in 1942. She has published many works of fiction including Monkey Grip, Cosmo Cosmolino and The Children's Bach. Her fiction has won numerous awards. She is also one of Australia's most respected non-fiction writers, and received a Walkley Award for journalism in 1993.
Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart, The Feel of Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation. In 2006 she won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. She lives in Melbourne.
Praise for Helen Garner's work
'Helen Garner is an extraordinarily good writer. There is not a paragraph, let alone a page, where she does not compel your attention.'
Bulletin
'She is outstanding in the accuracy of her observations, the intensity of passion...her radar-sure humour.'
Washington Post
'Garner has always had a mimic's ear for dialogue and an eye for unconscious symbolism, the clothes and gestures with which we give ourselves away.'
Peter Craven, Australian
'Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia.'
Ed Campion, Bulletin
Her most recent books are The First Stone, True Stories, My Hard Heart, The Feel of Stone and Joe Cinque's Consolation. In 2006 she won the Melbourne Prize for Literature. She lives in Melbourne.
Praise for Helen Garner's work
'Helen Garner is an extraordinarily good writer. There is not a paragraph, let alone a page, where she does not compel your attention.'
Bulletin
'She is outstanding in the accuracy of her observations, the intensity of passion...her radar-sure humour.'
Washington Post
'Garner has always had a mimic's ear for dialogue and an eye for unconscious symbolism, the clothes and gestures with which we give ourselves away.'
Peter Craven, Australian
'Helen Garner writes the best sentences in Australia.'
Ed Campion, Bulletin
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 8, 2015
This was such a quick read that I finished it before I could even form an opinion about it!!! But true to form doesn't disappoint. Here she describes her short trip to Antarctica aboard the Professor Molchanov with some other characters. Her description, even in this short piece,is immaculate. Conjuring up the cold icebergs she brings them to life and even gives us a small glimpse of animal life and of her fellow travelers. Here is a short example of her powerful prose..."I am engaged in a battle with the terror of forgetting, which drives people to raise a camera between themselves and everything they encounter-as if direct experience were unbearable and they had to shield themselves from it....." Brilliant.
October 29, 2016
True to form, this essay is an unflinchingly honest account the authors experience visiting the Antarctic - without a camera on principle. Hilarious moments as she recounts her very real anger and hate towards the battalion photographers scrambling for "the shot" and then laments the difficulty of writing in her notebook with 3 pairs of gloves on. Garner confesses her own failing to find the right words, yet I felt she found the perfect ones.
February 21, 2019
I would read anything by Helen Garner and this did not disappoint. Although I find Helen a bit annoying in this book. Perhaps not as annoying as she found herself though...!
January 19, 2021
The excellent Black Inc publishers have provided a number of short pieces from notable authors, mostly in essay form, grouped together under their Short Black label, and this is one of them.
The author is Helen Garner and the subject is a "voyage" she undertook from Ushuaia in Argentina to the Antarctic Peninsula in the Russian Icebreaker Professor Molchonov.
Why did she go? I think the answer is icebergs. It certainly wasn't penguins or seals, and it wasn't to accumulate heaps of images to be looked at later... or not
She is bemused about people who spend much of the tour looking through a viewfinder, and puzzled about how she can describe the variety of emphatic shapes and subtle colours of the ice, lacking a useful camera and handicapped by the difficulty in making notes with three pairs of gloves keeping out the cold and a gale threatening to blow her notebook away. She succeeds in a clever way, even a sneaky way, by appropriating the words of the other tourists. But she manages a few phrases of her own - the first iceberg "unearthly, mother-of-pearl, glowing as if with its own inner light". Sounds a bit clumsy? Maybe, but it seems to convey the image rather nicely.
It was an eventful trip, and despite her supposed difficulties in getting pencil to paper she describes it in a way that creates visions in this reader's mind.
The takeaway is the question as to whether voyages like this should be experienced with the aid of camera and notebook, or whether, as the tour leader suggests, as an overall immersion in the environment that can be taken home as a seed, whose product will be the re-experiencing of treasured memories.
The author is Helen Garner and the subject is a "voyage" she undertook from Ushuaia in Argentina to the Antarctic Peninsula in the Russian Icebreaker Professor Molchonov.
Why did she go? I think the answer is icebergs. It certainly wasn't penguins or seals, and it wasn't to accumulate heaps of images to be looked at later... or not
She is bemused about people who spend much of the tour looking through a viewfinder, and puzzled about how she can describe the variety of emphatic shapes and subtle colours of the ice, lacking a useful camera and handicapped by the difficulty in making notes with three pairs of gloves keeping out the cold and a gale threatening to blow her notebook away. She succeeds in a clever way, even a sneaky way, by appropriating the words of the other tourists. But she manages a few phrases of her own - the first iceberg "unearthly, mother-of-pearl, glowing as if with its own inner light". Sounds a bit clumsy? Maybe, but it seems to convey the image rather nicely.
It was an eventful trip, and despite her supposed difficulties in getting pencil to paper she describes it in a way that creates visions in this reader's mind.
The takeaway is the question as to whether voyages like this should be experienced with the aid of camera and notebook, or whether, as the tour leader suggests, as an overall immersion in the environment that can be taken home as a seed, whose product will be the re-experiencing of treasured memories.
October 17, 2017
True to form Helen Garner manages to say more about herself and her crabbiness and grumpy mood than she does about the subject matter. She's such an angry writer and she never misses a chance to tell her reader what is making her angry, grumpy, cranky or irritated. How can any writer make a trip to the Antarctic and an up close experience of penguins in their native environment sound like an ordeal to be endured? She's extremely privileged yet she complains pretty much all the way through this short piece.
January 4, 2017
More, more, more! Why is this only 44 pages? Where is the rest of it? Surely this is just a preview of a longer work? I loved the sarcastic viewing of other passengers, the photographers in particular; I enjoyed the iceberg descriptions and the descriptions of animals (even though she didn't care for them). Only Helen Garner could treat a trip to Antarctica, of all places, with this much disdain! Still waiting for a book-length version, though.
January 24, 2016
Helen goes to Antarctica without a camera on principle.
Takes notes and debates the experience of the event as opposed to recording it in any form.
Perceptive writing, as always.
However after reading about two gale force storms I am not inclined to sign up for a voyage of my own.
Takes notes and debates the experience of the event as opposed to recording it in any form.
Perceptive writing, as always.
However after reading about two gale force storms I am not inclined to sign up for a voyage of my own.
January 3, 2018
I thought this was a full-length book, but it's a short essay about Garner's trip to the Antartica. What I love about her writing is that with her keen eye, she is always somewhere in her work, and often the way she presents herself is as a writer focusing, and sometimes like a curmudgeon.
April 26, 2017
Pint-sized Garner for perfectly pocketable rainy-day reading.
October 6, 2017
I want more. She can do no wrong!
January 1, 2018
Like all Garner, I just wanted this to go on for another 3000 pages for me to sink into.
December 27, 2018
What an enjoyable short story about Helen's trip to Antarctica and a great springboard for my Antarctica reading before our trip.
January 3, 2023
I finished this book before I could even start it. The author has a brilliant way with words and even though she struggles to find the words to describe how the Antarctica makes her feel she does just so.
As a traveller myself, I too try and explore the world without looking through the lense of camera. I resonated with her on this and could totally see where she was coming from. Taking in the view with your own eyes will always be better than seeing it through a camera. It’s like consuming a story through a book rather than a movie.
Plot wise, I felt she could have gone a little deeper with the other characters but I suppose that would take away from the book.
Over all id give it a 6/10
As a traveller myself, I too try and explore the world without looking through the lense of camera. I resonated with her on this and could totally see where she was coming from. Taking in the view with your own eyes will always be better than seeing it through a camera. It’s like consuming a story through a book rather than a movie.
Plot wise, I felt she could have gone a little deeper with the other characters but I suppose that would take away from the book.
Over all id give it a 6/10
January 22, 2020
This is very short but not at all slight. It's a blast of Antarctica and it's wonderful.
I've set myself an unprecedented reading target this year in part because I intend to read more things like this, short and brilliant stand-alone pieces. Not a hundred of them but maybe twenty. And also some long things. To hell with the middle ground of 400 pages to suit a publisher's shelf-image.
I've set myself an unprecedented reading target this year in part because I intend to read more things like this, short and brilliant stand-alone pieces. Not a hundred of them but maybe twenty. And also some long things. To hell with the middle ground of 400 pages to suit a publisher's shelf-image.
September 5, 2020
A short essay. Wish it was a whole book.
November 9, 2020
Highlighting the terror of forgetting, it’s another god damn delectable Helen special.
May 26, 2022
A short diary entry from an amazing writer. Wonderful.
7/10
7/10
July 20, 2022
I'm going to Antarctica in a few months and I was rapt to read her description of the voyage and the ice.
Looking forward to it!
Looking forward to it!
November 7, 2022
This is no more than an essay really but beautifully written and insightful - too much so when you recognise your behaviours in some of the ‘other� tourists�
December 2, 2024
Short sweet and poetically written account of travelling to Antarctica without a camera
December 20, 2017
Regions of Thick-Ribbed Ice (Short Blacks) was originally published in The Feel of Steel
April 16, 2017
A thin sliver of a book compared to the ice bergs on an Antarctica trip it mainly describes, this is some of my favourite writing of Helen Garner's. I remember seeing it years ago in the Good Weekend and I always remembered the lovely way she wrote about the people on the ice breaker and their relationship to the bergs. The paragraph about them all desperately trying to find metaphors to capture their reactions to their strange beauty is delightful. A good HSC 'Discovery' related text too!
March 13, 2018
One of my favourite Short Blacks, Garner is as always raw in her honesty, critical of her own pretentiousness and shows her vulnerability as a writer in her constant struggle to avoid metaphor while doing it so beautfully. It's a short poignant essay recounting her "voyage" to the Antartic and a worthwhile read for anyone who appreciates a good observational essay on human behaviour.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
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