We all have to work to live, even if it is an illegal survey for oil in the rapidly melting arctic. Software engineer Isobel needs to eat like everyone, and that’s how she fell into the job that leads her to the most northerly place on our planet.

As part of a weathered crew of sailors, scientists and corporate officers she sails into the ice where their advanced software Proteus will map everything there is to know. A great icebreaker leads their way into the brutal environment, and the days grow longer, time ever more detached, as they pass through the endless white expanse of the ice.

But they are not alone. They have attracted the attention of seals, gulls and a hungry, dedicated polar bear. The journey to plunder one of the few remaining resources the planet has to o er must endure the ravages of the ice, the bear and time itself.

This is what we and when we travel – Always North – a profound meditation on our consumption of the world, and the perception of time. For fans of Adam Robert’s The Thing Itself, only at the farthest reaches of the world can we see the truths closest to our minds.

Published
October 2019
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Author

Vicki Jarrett

Vicki Jarrett is a novelist and short story writer from Edinburgh. Her first novel, Nothing is Heavy, was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year 2013. Her short fiction has been published in various magazines and anthologies, including the Best British Short Stories 2014, broadcast by BBC Radio 4, Radio Scotland and Radio Somerset, and shortlisted for the shortlisted for the Scotland on Sunday/Macallan Short Story Competition, the Manchester Fiction Prize and the Bridport Prize. Her short story collection, The Way Out, published in 2015, was longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award and shortlisted for the Jerwood Fiction…