Jamie reviewed South by Sir Ernest Shackleton
Review of 'South' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
Mostly better than than Alfred Lansing's Endurance in that it proves Lansing's account to be entirely unnecessary. Both books rely almost entirely on the journals of Shackleton and his companions. Both are structured more or less chronologically, though Lansing edits out some bits and foregoes any account of the Aurora portion of the adventure. Most importantly, though, Shackleton's account benefits from being told in the first person. If you want to suck the tension out of an adventure, shift it to third person.
This book does suffer, as Lansing's does, from some stretches of boring detail and an annoying (to me) emphasis on the lives of the dogs over that of the humans, occasionally. You learn every dog's name but only a dozen or so of the 56 men on the expedition.
