Polar literature is a peculiar and underserved literary genre, primarily overshadowed by the surfeit of real-life tales of bravery and endurance penned by three generations of Arctic and Antarctic explorers. Stacy Carlson’s THE GYRE, however, exceeds even the most grizzled and awe-inspiring writings of the likes of Amundsen and Shackleton. It conjures an exceptionally realized tale of piety, madness, and a search for some kind of belonging.

The year is 1860, and Arkady Afanasyev is aboard a ship on its way to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard to collect hides. A priest, he harbors the conceit of a holy man among infidels—which, in a way, the Pomors that make up the crew of the ship are (not literally, but in terms of their crassness, their bluffness, their ribald stories, and their rough tongues). Arkady searches for Father Vasily, a hermit to whom Arkady looked up as a younger man, only to find on his arrival that no one has seen him for years. He is told Vasily lives in an extremely remote area well to the north, and sets out on “that long, roadless road" with a gaggle of saints drawn from across the annals of history for company. Visions segue into reality, apparitions defy explanation, and Arkady seeks to rationalize neither.

The story is illuminated by a long and brilliantly lit imaginative arc. When one sees the privations that Arkady puts himself through, and the needless nature of them, it is hard not to think of the Arctic balloonist S.V. Andree’s hubris, or perhaps Landseer’s painting Man Proposes, God Disposes. In literature—as in real life, one fancies—the high polar regions do have a tendency to strip away conceits.

Yet in many ways, Arkady makes for a sympathetic protagonist. Stripped of earthly cares, uncomfortable (or perhaps unsatisfied) around others, he seeks a sort of communion with the frozen land. Carlson’s attention to detail—the novel is steeped in lore, as well as the more prosaic details of a mid-Victorian era as seen through the eyes of a Russian—makes THE GYRE a remarkable achievement, and a truly marvelous historical novel.

Glittering with historical detail and full of psychological intrigue, Stacy Carlson's THE GYRE offers meditations on the mysteries of the High Arctic.

~ Craig Jones for IndieReader