One to Watch: MINDS OF WINTER by Ed O’Loughlin

Ed O’Loughlin’s forthcoming novel MINDS OF WINTER (riverrun) arrived in the post during the week, a physics-defying process that involved it simultaneously dropping through the letterbox and pole-vaulting to the top of ye olde reading pile. To wit:

THE NEW NOVEL FROM BOOKER LONGLISTED ED O’LOUGHLIN, IN WHICH A MEETING BETWEEN TWO STRANGERS SHEDS LIGHT ON THE GREATEST UNSOLVED MYSTERY OF POLAR EXPLORATION.
  It begins with a chance encounter at the top of the world.
  Fay Morgan and Nelson Nilsson have each arrived in Inuvik, Canada - 120 miles north of the Arctic Circle - searching for answers about a family member: Nelson for his estranged older brother, Fay for her disappeared grandfather. They soon learn that these two men have an unexpected link - a hidden share in one of the greatest enduring mysteries of polar exploration.
  In a feat of extraordinary scope and ambition, Ed O’Loughlin moves between a frozen present and an-ever thawing past, and from the minds of two present-day wanderers to the lives some of polar history’s most enigmatic figures. MINDS OF WINTER is a novel about ice and time and their ability to preserve or destroy, of mortality and loss and our dreams of transcending them.

  MINDS OF WINTER will be published on August 25th. For reviews of Ed O'Loughlin’s previous novels, clickety-click here ...