Review: Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

As I am sadly no longer a child, I have not read any of Michelle Paver's other books, but apparently they are a big hit among the younger readership.

And on the evidence of her new adult novel, Dark Matter, I am not remotely surprised.

Because I don't think it would be too presumptuous to suggest that this book might become something of a modern classic. I absolutely loved it, for a number of reasons and I do hope that Paver continues to write for older readers alongside her other work.

Showing a superb understanding of how to build tension and horror without ladling out the incidents too generously, Paver has created a story that offers just the right balance of dread, menace and possible ambiguity, while giving only the tantalising glimpses of her monster that I find more satisfying than a gore-drenched big reveal.

She presents a story that also has the right mix of research and a creative new setting that is more immediately gripping than your standard haunted house, but also keeps things very simple in a narrative sense, which is no mean feat for a writer to achieve.

Frustrated scientist Jack Miller is offered the chance to escape his boring office job in 1930s London by joining a meteorological expedition to the Arctic. Initially irritated by his upper class team mates, he begins to warm to one of them and the adventure starts to look like the life-changing opportunity Miller has been looking for.

But a series of accidents and problems begins to shrink the team before they even arrive at their destination, ending up with Miller being forced to spend several weeks alone at the isolated cabin while his two remaining colleagues go back to civilisation for medical treatment. By this time, the sun has set for the last time on the Arctic winter and Miller faces four months of darkness before it will rise again - worse still, the failing of the light seems to have roused another resident of the frozen landscape.

No ghost story is complete without the possible suspicion over the narrator's sanity and Dark Matter messes with the reader's mind just as effectively as the ghostly apparition messes with Miller's. There is also a really nice subtext to it which is brave and unusual, giving this apparently simple tale a bit of depth that really lifts it above the norm.

Paver is clearly not a one-trick pony who has mastered the art of pleasing children. She is a genuinely talented all-rounder and I very much look forward to her next literary outing.