Non-fiction: Jerri Nielsen with Maryanne Vollers: Ice Bound (Ebury Press, 2001)
I’ve already talked about Ice Bound the movie here, based on this very book. The book is Dr Jerri Nielsen’s own account of her time as the winter-over doctor at the U.S. South Pole station. She was stricken with breast cancer, administered chemotherapy to herself and was airlifted out in an emergency operation.
It’s nice to have a break in the endless stories about Scott. I like reading about the various contemporary communities at the South pole, and there’s a lot of that here.
It feels a bit uncharitable to criticize someone’s cancer book, but the mushiness and endless self-analysis were too much for me at times. Maybe it would be different if I had experience with cancer.