Reviews for The birthday boys

The average rating for The birthday boys based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-10-18 00:00:00 Kevin Farrens ON SALE THIS WEEK FOR $1.99! Trust me - the most gorgeous, cold weather book you can find. This lady could write! No spoilers. When their glassy, yellow bodies were found frozen solid some eight months later, the men's journals and letters to their mothers were quietly removed from the still-intact tent. Its poles were taken down, and the canvas collapsed to cover them like a shroud. Antarctic rocks were stacked on them in a cold cairn, and all of England wept. This information is not in the book, but knowing it gives it a proper place in our minds. TIDBIT: My friend Laura attended an author event with Donald Ray Pollock and noted that among the books he found as highly impactful on his writing career, this obscure little novel was listed. The final chapter left a huge impression with Pollock and obviously, with me too. When a reader starts a book like "Into the Wild" or even "A Fault in Our Stars," he knows things are not going to end well. I confess that this doomed expedition to Antarctica was something I vaguely had a notion of but honestly couldn't even recall the name of its leader. But then again, I'm an average, somewhat ignorant American. This incredible book - a short mesmerizing piece of historical fiction - was written 25 years ago by an Englishwoman who was seemingly a cross between Ann Patchett and Jodi Picoult... gorgeous writing crossed with prolific publishing. Beryl Bainbridge was a quirky, outspoken woman with a life-size statue of Jesus in her living room along with a stuffed bison she named Eric. The Beatles once partied at her house for three days and nights solid, causing her to take her two young children and stay with the neighbors until the boys had had their fill. When she wrote The Birthday Boys, everybody in England already knew the story well. Newspapers, magazines, and books aplenty had already dissected this ill fated "race" to the South Pole. The expedition leader, Robert Falcon Scott (called Con by his friends), was largely eviscerated for errors in judgement that endangered his men and took lives. That he would even choose to return to Antarctica (the 1910 exploration was his second there) after having been in its unrelenting cold for three years is way beyond my reckoning. Think about how cold we feel today with neoprene sock liners, Goretex boots, and literally space-age protection against the elements. What did they have from 1901 through 1912? Leather. The lowest temperatures measured were - hold on to your long johns - minus 77 degrees Fahrenheit (-60 Celsius). Falcon Scott was after the science of the place and wanted to go back. I think it says something about him that his crew was made up in part of repeat offenders. By that, I mean that the young men who'd been along for the first scientific expedition from 1901 to 1904 signed up a second time. When people say they'd follow someone to the ends of the earth, they are merely echoing the feelings of 36 year old Taff Evans who had, in the 1901 trip "south" come close to death, dangling inside a crevasse along with Capt. Scott. Taff, a heavy-partying petty officer adored Scott and always referred to him as the Owner. Beryl Bainbridge writes this passage about their near death experience: "I was scared for my life, but at the same time I couldn't help noticing how bright everything was, the ice not really blue at all but shot through with spangled points of rosy light so dazzling that it made me crinkle up my eyes as though I had something to smile about, and there was a shadow cast by the Owner's shoulder that washed from seagreen to purple as he twisted in his traces." The author writes an entire chapter from the perspective of Taff - the big, hardworking party-boy, and his style of speaking is something that is part him (from his letters) and part author. His voice, by way of grammar or his habit of noticing pretty little things about the world around him, was clearly different from the other four whose chapters are also here. Until I opened the book and started poking around the internet for background facts, I didn't realize that there were a total of five men - including sweet Taff - that split from the large main group to attempt reaching the South Pole before a Norwegian crew. The five of them died (sorry about the spoiler if you are as ignorant of history as I am) on their trudge back from the pole, and Beryl's five-chaptered book is a way of giving each of them a voice from the ice. Because Con Scott has been disparaged over the past century, I was really interested in how his voice would be portrayed. He had a thick journal with him when his remains were found, along with letters to his wife and others. His affection for the men and his frustration with having to balance science with the "race" are heard in Beryl's words for him but taken from his own writing. He has a conversation with Oates - another of the five voices - that is a bit of foreshadowing of their deaths. The ponies they had brought along to haul the supply sledges were not doing well, despite the fact that other little horses had fared extremely well in an exploration by Shackleton. Scott was intent on saving the ponies, especially an old one named Weary Willie. Scott and Oates got to talking about survival in the cold, and specifically about an earlier Arctic expedition where some of the survivors, soon to be dead anyway, were forced to eat their deceased comrades to stay alive. Oates argued against instinct for survival and said that he would put a bullet in his head. Scott, although a firm and fearless leader, was known to be emotional. He was brought to tears easily. He offered Oates the promise of an easier, gentler way out, God forbid it should ever come to that. As we know that his life did end, read for yourself as to how they said their eternal goodnights. 'In the unlikely event of its being necessary,' I said, 'we have more up-to-date methods. Bill has opium and morphia.' 'Damn it, no,' he said. 'I want to be in control. I don't want to drift into death.' I am a scientist by training and by 20 years of experience - Scott's dedication to science touched me. He knew the trip was dangerous, as did the men. Like the astronauts and cosmonauts who circle above us today, they believed that the risk was worth it. It galls me a bit that he has been vilified so much. The expedition itself was never intended as a race to the South Pole, but as a series of carefully made scientific experiments - much like Scott's first trip to Antarctica. Regardless of the race for the pole, offshoot mini-expeditions were conducted - as planned - after they made landfall in 1910 and hit their primary base camp. Scientists were dispatched out in smaller parties to study geology, meteorology (thus we know about the -77 degrees), physics, and biology. In order to facilitate later expeditions, Capt Scott was also testing the efficiencies of using new fangled "polar" motor cars, dog teams, and the aforementioned sturdy ponies. He had to privately raise all of the money for the men, equipment, and supplies, and when he was about to launch was informed that - guess what? A Norwegian expedition to the North Pole - truly just racing to plant the country's flag - had done an about-face because they'd been beaten in the Arctic. Before Scott and his men even left British soil, the Norwegian leader had fired all his scientists and loaded up on 100 sled dogs so he could make a dash to the South Pole. The Norwegian blew off all and every experiment just for bragging rights to set his flag there first. Scott was, at the 11th hour, challenged with beating him on top of completing all the pure science that was his primary aim. Before his dash for the pole, three of Scott's team took a side trip to go after the eggs of Emperor penguins on the coast. It was believed in the early 1900s that these particular embryos would show the link between the evolution of birds and of reptiles. You know how today paleontologists will tell you that dinosaurs were more closely related to birds than, say, alligators? These scientists were trying to glean that sort of information by half-crawling in total darkness (Antarctic winters are night time all day long, remember), hauling sledges, and camping in blizzards for WEEKS on end in temperatures that were 70 something below zero. Just to gather five lousy eggs that might unravel evolution. These men chose to go - they were not ordered. How far would you crawl for science? These guys survived this little side trip, but were exhausted and punch drunk. Beryl writes this when one of them seems entirely happy to be alone at the bottom of the world, lying in the icy black for a rest, watching the aurora borealis: "Ever obliging, Cherry croaked, 'What are you doing here, Uncle Bill?' And he replied, 'I've never liked crowds', and then we all squealed, because we could see the humour of it: three ragged, frosted figures lying on their backs in the darkness of nowhere, emitting cries like stuck pigs as God's own paintbrush splashed among the stars." Beryl writes gorgeously, as shown in these excerpts, but one last thing about The Birthday Boys might intrigue you. I wondered how a highly popular Englishwoman author came to write a work of historical fiction about a well documented and failed trip that happened 80 years earlier. Seriously, what else was there to write about after eight decades? It turns out that she had just penned a book about JM Barrie - the guy who wrote Peter Pan. In researching Barrie, Beryl discovered that he had been really good friends with Captain Falcon Scott. Wait. A seemingly egotistical polar explorer (who led his men to death) and a playwright? Friends? Their kinship seemed odd to her until she started reading Scott's journal and his letters home. Then she read the letters written by his crew. Suddenly the "lost boys" from Peter Pan's Neverland seemed to take on life. And death. Those lost boys were, in Beryl's mind, the birthday boys of Antarctica. Five stars. On my favorites shelf. It is hard to find, but one can buy it for one cent from Amazon with $3.99 shipping. "I left him and went up on deck to look out at the slithering city, its glitter of street lamps fizzy under the rain. There's something wrong about a ship in dock, something pathetic, like a bird fluttering in a spill of oil. The Nova was tethered to her berth by ropes and chains, caught in a pool of greasy water. I could feel her shifting under my feet, tugging to be free." "I don't think any of us were in our right minds. None of us will forget that nightmare scene - the ice chunks heaving in the black water amidst the bucking whales, Birdie grotesquely riding that dying pony, Titus swinging the pickaxe against a sky the colour of blood." ."And then she embraced me, and I thought it was her tears that rolled down my cheeks until the pain in my legs jerked me into consciousness, and I realised it was my own eyes that spilled with grief."

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-03 00:00:00 Jim Overman This fictional account of Robert Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole is chilling (no pun intended) because you know how it ends. It is told from the viewpoint of the 5 men from the crew who made the final trek from the camp to the pole, only to find that Roald Amundsen had gotten there before them. Heartbreaking to say the least, it read almost like a horror story. Fighting the elements, hunger, and exhaustion with nothing more than courage and character, these men are finally beaten by bad decisions and poor planning. That's where the horror comes in, because it could have been a different story had Scott simply listened to those of his crew who knew more than he did, instead of insisting on total obeisance to his role as leader. The final chapter was incredible, and the closing scene was powerful in it's understatement.