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Dark Matter

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Dark Matter

By: Michelle Paver
Narrated by: Jeremy Northam
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About this listen

January 1937. Jack Miller has just about run out of options. His shoes have worn through, he can't afford to heat his rented room in Tooting, and he longs to use his training as a specialist wireless operator instead of working in his dead-end job. When he is given the chance to join an arctic expedition, as communications expert, by a group of elite Oxbridge graduates, he brushes off his apprehensions and convinces himself to join them.

As the young men set sail from a gloomy Britain on the verge of war, Jack feels the overwhelming excitement of not knowing what lies ahead. Little can he imagine the horrors that await him in their destination, Gruhuken, a place that cannot escape the savage echo of its past.

©2010 Michelle Paver (P)2010 Orion Publishing Group Limited Ghosts Horror Scary Haunted

Critic Reviews

Dark Matter is brilliant. Imagine Jack London meets Stephen King. The novel virtually defines a new genre: literary creepy. I loved it (Jeffrey Deaver)
It's an elegantly told tale with a vivid sense of place - and it's deeply scary (Lesley Glaister)
Ghost stories don't frighten me much but this one did. Quite a lot, actually ... Chilling in every respect (Richard Madeley)
'From the first page Dark Matter gripped me with a quiet relentless intensity - every word is perfectly placed, every silence heavy with dread... absolutely unmissable' (Simon Pegg)
All stars
Most relevant
A beautiful atmospheric story. It had me captivated by its darkness and tension
The beauty of this novel is not what is described but that which is implied. Don't listen to it expecting a hair raiser, just allow yourself to be immersed in the cold.

Grim and frost bitten

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This story kicks off with a very effective opening monologue. The first person point of view provides the story with a fantastic atmosphere. The writing style combined with a brilliant narration performance by Jeremy Northam allow the reader to become fully immersed in the story, which itself is quite creepy and realistic. The setting is realistically portrayed and allows the reader to really get a sense for the intense cold and isolation experienced by the protagonist as he progresses through the story.

I honestly cannot give enough credit to Jeremy Northam for this performance. I believe he presented the story flawlessly. Even his portrayal of the various Scandinavian accents are extremely realistic. Often narrator's attempts at various accents can detract from the story and drag the reader out of the experience, but this is most definitely not an issue in this case.

A well deserved four stars!

Believable and Atmospheric

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Great story. Loved the Arctic descriptions. Narrator terrific. Would recommend to lovers of ghost stories

Spooky and good

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I enjoyed every moment of this book It's a study on loniless, isolation, sanity and despair. But it's also an account of courage and resilience against a formidable force made more so by the environment in which it resides. The arctic becomes it's own character. And it's terrifingly beautiful. The suspense is executed brilliantly. And the dread is all too real.

Chilling and Captivating

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The narration is superb. The story is witty, full of subtle references to other great pieces of literature, though without interrupting the flow of the narrative. Michelle Paver’s great joy for writing glosses every line to light up the very dark, and almost gothic storyline. I am so glad I bought this book. You will be too.

Creepy, creatively brilliant and believably scary.

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“How odd, that light should prevent one from seeing.”

I’ve been in the mood for a good ghost story for a while, and when another book blogger told me that Michelle Paver’s novel Dark Matter was not only suspenseful and spooky, but also set in a wild remote place, I didn’t need any more persuasion! And I must say that it lived up to all my expectations.

Dark Matter features an Arctic expedition in 1937, when four young men set off in a Norwegian vessel to spend a year on the remote land spit of Gruhuken on the Barents Sea. For twenty-eight year old Jack, who narrates the story through journey entries, his role as wireless operator on the expedition is a way to prove himself and escape his drab job as clerk that has kept him afloat after his family was bankrupted, ending his hopes of finishing his university degree. After his family’s fall from grace, Jack has turned into a loner who has no friends and rarely associates with other people, keeping himself to himself. Gruhuken, in its remoteness, has a strange appeal to him, a way to make a new start, clean his slate. Both his background as well as his personality make Jack an interesting, rounded character whose voice is perfect for the era and drive much of story’s momentum as his initial reserve and preconceived ideas begin to crumble in the remoteness of the Arctic Circle.

Paver does an excellent job in evoking the spirit of the wild setting she describes so vividly. The initial beauty of the Arctic summer with its constant daylight, which makes the men optimistic and confident about their mission, feeling invincible even in the wild, remote region they feel themselves stranded in. As the seasons change, and the days become shorter, there is an obvious change in the men, their confidence eroded by the ever increasing darkness and the eerie silence of the surrounding land when all the birds have fled before winter. As daylight gives way to constant darkness, Paver creates an atmosphere so tense and claustrophobic that I could literally feel the cold creeping in through the cracks in the wall, grateful of my own bedside lamp that kept the night at bay whilst reading.

Tension soon mounts as the isolation plays tricks on the human psyche – or is the threat real? Jack is a man of science, and he is all too eager to explain away the feelings of dread and menace he sometimes feels when venturing outside. But as his last companions are forced to leave, and he is left on his own in this unforgiving place, he soon finds that his rational explanations are woefully inadequate to explain away the fear. Something evil is afoot at Gruhuken, and it is slowly closing in.

Paver has achieved the art of balancing her narrative on the fine line between reality and the occult, in a way that we are never quite sure if Jack’s accounts are the unravelling of his own mind due to the constant dark, the isolation and the absence of other human contact, or whether there really is something evil haunting Gruhuken. All I know is that it was so authentic and believable that I buried deep under my doona and wild horses could not have made me go outside alone in the dark! Personally, I find that it is very difficult to find a book where the supernatural element is just right – enough to make you very, very afraid, but not over the top to make you having to suspend disbelief. It is a balance achieved by very few, and Paver has absolutely nailed it! One passage about the bear post in particular had my hair stand on end as I pictured it so vividly in my mind.

For anyone looking for a good ghost story with a rich, atmospheric setting and a historical element (yes, this book has it all!), I cannot recommend this book highly enough!

Good ghost story with a rich, atmospheric setting

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Listen to it by yourself alone in the night during a freezing storm, it will give you nightmares.

Gave me nightmares

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I have an abiding affection for dark fiction by British writers, often set in cold and lonely places. Indeed I have read this wonderful book by Michelle Paver four times and consider it a modern day classic. So what a stroke of luck - my favourite book read by my favourite actor! Surely there you have a recipe for disappointment and unmet expectatations? Yet happily, I adored this rendition of Paver's atmospheric and melancholy novel and as it's structured in a series of journal entries, listening instead of reading feels like you're really inside the protagonist's head. Jeremy Northam's voice is like a glass of red wine beside an open fire on a chilly night: full, rich and warm. He could read a phonebook and still have me enthralled but I truly loved the life he breathed into the characters while conveying all the loneliness, isolation and dread of the story. 10 out of 10. If you like stories by Jonathan Aycliffe and Susan Hill, this one is for you. My only complaint is that Jeremy Northam hasn't yet narrated any more creepy tales! Let's hope by some miracle he reads this and feels inspired...

Beautifully chilling tale and wonderful narration

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Very pleased to stumble upon this audiobook, story was excellent and evocative and the reader did an excellent job of engaging me

Thrilling tale and brilliant narration

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What an amazingly well crafted and evocative story. And excellent narrating. I highly recommend it.

Beautifully crafted horror.

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