more arctic angst

it's funny how these things work. The other day I interviewed Ken McGoogan on his book, Lady Franklin's Revenge. Today I had a great talk with Stephen Heighton about his novel, afterlands. How is that funny you ask? Well, afterlands is the fictional account of the survivors of the 1871 Polaris Expedition who spent six months marooned on a steadily-crumbling ice floe in the Arctic and faced madness, murder and other grisly things. The captain of the Polaris, Charles Hall, had first gone to the Arctic in 1860 in search of, that's right, Sir John Franklin.

Heighton's first novel, The Shadow Boxer, made a big splash and his collection of poetry, The Ecstasy of Skeptics, was shortlisted for a Governor General's award. He is fascinating and we talked of human frailty, a really horrible bear scene and Hollywood movies.