01/09/2017
The third novel by O’Loughlin (Not Untrue and Not Unkind) is a complex tale of historical intrigue about 19th-century polar explorers, the strange disappearance of Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition in 1845, and the unexpected discovery of key evidence relating to the disappearance in 2009. When a chronometer issued to Franklin shows up in London 150 years after the expedition crudely disguised as a carriage clock, speculation about the fate of Franklin and his 129 men is reignited. In Canada’s Northwest Territory, drifter Nelson Nilsson searches for his missing brother, Bert, but meets a British woman, Fay Morgan, who is researching her grandfather’s past. Unwilling allies, Nelson and Fay look through Bert’s papers, discovering unlikely connections between their own searches and Franklin’s fate, but neither trusts the other and secrets remain hidden. O’Loughlin uses frequent historical flashbacks to trace the chronometer’s passage among polar explorers, from Franklin, Joseph Bellot, and Elisha Kane to Cecil Meares and Roald Amundsen, without clearly defining the chronometer’s provenance. Nelson and Fay’s investigation is further clouded by Bert’s apparent obsession with the real identity of Canada’s infamous cop killer Albert Johnson, “the Mad Trapper of Rat River,” and the World War II spy activities of Fay’s grandfather. The historical depictions of polar explorers—the men, conditions, and horrible fates—are accurate and stunning. (Mar.)
Minds of Winter is a remarkable feat of imagination, empathy, and research. Past and present merge to convey the polar landscape's immense mysteries, and the lives of those voyagers compelled to seek answers in its icy expanses. Ed O'Loughlin is a skilled cartographer of both the Arctic and the human heart. What a magnificent novel.—Ron Rash
A spellbinding tale of adventures and explorers, spies and outlaws, of derring-do, self-sacrifice and impossible feats of endurance . . . In the sheer brio of its storytelling, it brings to mind Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence or David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas - profound, yes, but terrific fun, too.—Irish Examiner
[A] brilliant paean to the obsessions of the polar explorers . . . stupendously good.—Australian
In both concept and execution the novel is a serious piece of work at once vastly entertaining and ambitious.—Sunday Times
A compelling and hugely ambitious novel.—Mail on Sunday
An extraordinary tale that warps actual history into something conjoined, poetic and thrilling . . . [A] marvel of a novel.—Independent on Sunday
With each novel, O'Loughlin is expanding his interests and his imaginative grasp - the first sign of a genuinely talented writer. He is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting novelists currently at work.—Sunday Business Post
The Franklin novel to end all Franklin novels. Never have so many different narrative threads been taken up and twined together.—Arctic Book Review
A novel wondrous in its tone and reach . . . the final pages seem inevitable as great endings must . . . The title is from Wallace Stevens poem The Snowman, where we're asked to behold the 'Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.' It takes a good writer to take that on. It takes a great one to succeed.—Eoin McNamee, Irish Times
Intricately structured . . . thoroughly researched . . . The Arctic itself is a central character.—Times Literary Supplement
★ 03/01/2017
Like ice floes in the Arctic, the pieces of O'Loughlin's (Toploader) latest novel bump and grind against one another until they merge at the finale. The main story takes place in present-day northernmost Canada, interspersed with characters, periods, and settings from the 1840s to the Cold War, and from Australia to Russia. The MacGuffin is a marine chronometer, which accompanied real-life Sir John Franklin in 1845 on his fatal search for the Northwest Passage. Neither he, the clock, nor much of the crew and ships were ever found, but somehow the timepiece ends up in a London auction house in 1999. Woven into this mystery is the present-time search of Nelson Nilsson for his missing brother, and Fay Morgan for information about her mysterious grandfather, who may have been involved in espionage. Was Hugh Morgan a disciple of Cecil Meares, an English adventurer who pops up here and there in history and this tale? The reader will move from chapter to chapter, wondering where the book is taking them and how things are connected, until, at the end, it may all be a chilly, snow-blown mirage--except for the bodies, and that clock. VERDICT Readers who delight in history and mystery mixed together will appreciate O'Loughlin's shifting drifts of reality and imagination.--W. Keith McCoy, Somerset Cty. Lib. Syst., Bridgewater, NJ
2017-01-23
A massive, complex novel about a long-lost chronometer.In O'Loughlin's (Top Loader, 2011, etc.) acknowledgements, where he lists the prodigious amount of research that went into his novel, he describes the book as "a self-indulgent mess of cobbled-together myth and mystery." He began with a 2009 British newspaper article about the Arnold 294, a high-precision navigational chronometer that was taken on the unsuccessful 19th-century Franklin expedition to discover a Northwest passage and was believed lost but which had turned up in Britain 160 years later, converted into a carriage clock. How could this be? Like the "meshes of a net," this is the first of many narrative threads woven through O'Loughlin's labyrinthine tale. The main story involves Nelson Nilsson and his present-day search in the fierce cold and snow of the Arctic Circle for his missing geographer brother, Bert. He's soon joined by an Englishwoman, Fay Morgan, who needs help in her search for her missing grandfather, Hugh Morgan, a former apprentice to Cecil Meares, the dog handler for Scott's 1910 expedition to Antarctica. Then we're in 1841 at a festive ball being held on the decks of the expedition's two ships, the Erebus and the Terror. Set on three continents, the novel moves back and forth in time, mixing in fictional and historical figures. On this voyage, you'll encounter the explorer Roald Amundsen; the Mad Trapper of Rat River; and Jack London. Also making appearances are northern Canada's Distant Early Warning system and World War II Nazi meteorological stations in Greenland. At one point Nelson and Fay realize their separate searches are actually converging. Make a list of characters and keep it handy—maps are provided—to navigate this atmospheric, far-reaching novel. It may all be too much for some readers. A tour de force juggling act of narrative legerdemain.
