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Wharton Thomas

Icefields

Washington Square Press

List Price: $19.95
Price: $17.05
You Save: $2.90 (15%)

Description

Winner of:

  • The Banff Grand National Prize for Literature
  • The Writers Guild of Alberta Best First Book Award
  • The Commonwealth Best First Novel Prize (Caribbean and Canada Region)
  • At a quarter past three in the afternoon, on August 17, 1898, Doctor Edward Byrne slipped on the ice of Acturus glacier in the Canadian Rockies and slid into a crevasse . . .

    Nearly sixty feet below the surface, Byrne is wedged upside down between the narrowing walls of a chasm, fighting his desire to sleep. The ice in front of him is lit with a pale blue-green radiance. There, embedded in he pure, antediluvian glacier, Byrne sees something that will inextricably link him to the vast bed of ice, and the people who inhabit this strange corner of the world. In this moment, his life becomes a quest to uncover the mystery of the icefield that almost became his tomb.

    Within the deceptively simple framework of a tourist guidebook, Icefields takes a breathtaking, imaginative look at the human spirit, loss, myth, and elusive truths. Here is an impressive literary landscape, and an expedition unlike any you have ever experienced.


    This first novel begins with an imaginative and ingenious premise: a physician trekking across the Arcturus Glacier in the Canadian Rockies in 1898 slips and tumbles into a crevasse, where he beholds a winged human figure. The rest of the book tells of Dr. Edward Byrne's efforts to get to the bottom of the mystery in the ice. Along the way, he encounters a series of eccentrics, each involved in their own quest: the explorer Freya; the industrialist Trask; the poet Hal; and the slightly mad Elspeth, Byrne's lover. Told through scientific notes, journal entries, letters, and dialogue, this historical tale of the incalculable encountered in the mountains marks a promising debut.

    Customer Reviews

    Glacially Good
    "That's what he called himself once, the summer her left for the war, and I'd laughed. Glaciologist. I'd never heard the word before. I'd never considered there might be others like him, scientists who studied only glaciers. I thought he was the one man on earth who bothered that much with them, that this science was his alone, that he had invented it. Arcturology. The science of being distant, and receding a little every year."

    The book takes place during the first two decades of the last century in what was to become Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada. Byrne, a doctor, was exploring the region when he falls into into a crevasse on the Arcturus glacier. In the time it takes his group to notice his absence and haul him out, he sees something in the ice; a pale figure with huge wings. The image haunts him, even as he is rescued, revived and returned to London. Years later he is drawn back to the glacier and the book chronicles his life studying the ice and the other people who live for awhile at the hot springs hotel built at its foot. Evocative, poetic and strange, this is one of the most interesting books I've read this year.

    I will admit to a bias; I spent almost every childhood holiday in the area and have been up on the Athabasca glacier. Every place name was resonant with memory. It's a spectacularly beautiful, fragile area and Wharton's descriptions of the first residents of the region and the conditions under which they lived, a peculiar mixture of Victorian gentility and wilderness was fascinating. Alongside Byrne, Icefields tells the story of a poet come west to be a guide, a servant girl who takes charge of the running of a hotel and develops a relationship of sorts with Byrne, an intrepid female explorer and a tracker turned entrepreneur who sees opportunity in the coming railway.
    A Slippery Slope
    Wharton has written a mythical story of the search for meaning; for what's passed by; for what's yet to come; for the love of one for another and the fear of it. This story has been written thousands of times by hundreds of authors - and will be - in the same numbers - probably for the rest of time.

    This version, however, is short enough to not have the reader wallow in melancholy; while long enough to let you really sense the glacial landscape he chose for the setting.

    I have no idea which of the characters I most identify with, but I would like to meet several of them - each for a different reason.

    This isn't a difficult read, but it will cause considerable reflection about our obsessions and their impact on others as well as ourselves.
    Sparse, quiet, pensive -- remarkable
    Like another reviewer here, I came to Icefields after reading Wharton's second novel, Salamander. The two could NOT be more different! What they have in common is Wharton's astonishing gift for imagery, and for seeing (or hearing or touching or tasting ...) the mundane in completely new ways. I would agree with the reviewer who cautioned potential readers that the blurb is not quite accurate, but where that reviewer said that the novel failed to deliver, I would put it the other way around: the novel *does* deliver, but the blurb on the back cover doesn't accurately capture what that message is.

    I found the novel to be a quiet, beautiful, and intensely inward-looking work. Almost minimalist. Again, different from Salamander. Remarkably thought-provoking (*like* Salamander). To me, it seems almost like a mirror image to Alan Garner's Strandloper -- though, since the settings are rather polar opposites (literally), perhaps a photographic negative is a better analogy.
    Passable
    I bought this book on a whim, so I wasn't too disappointed upon finding it to be a fairly average and forgettable book. The prose is rather sparse, which Wharton may have done purposefully to match the setting of the novel. Some people might like it, but it was not to my taste.
    Passable
    I bought this book on a whim, so I wasn't too disappointed upon finding it to be a fairly average and forgettable book. The prose is rather sparse, which Wharton may have done purposefully to match the setting of the novel. Some people might like it, but it was not to my taste.
    The Shadow of Malabron (Perilous Realms)

    Walker Books Ltd

    List Price: $12.61

    Description

    One boy, a wolf and a perilous journey: a fantasy that weaves the fabric of well-loved stories into an epic adventure.Long ago, Malabron the Night King tried to turn all stories into one - his story, a nightmare of absolute power. But when Will, a rebellious teenager, stumbles from the present into the realm where stories come from, he is caught up in Malabron's evil designs. Aided by some of the story folk - including the feisty Rowen, her grandfather Penrose (a loremaster) and Shade, the laconic but loyal wolf - Will must combat a host of perils, if he is ever to find the gateless gate that will take him home.

    Customer Reviews

    A world I wanted to stay in as long as possible--and return to as soon as possible
    Anyone who's ever had to move unwillingly to a new city, state, or country, leaving friends behind, can identify right away with Will's sense of loss, his feelings of powerlessness, and his longing for escape--and with his "borrowing" of his father's motorcycle to return to the enticing carnival that their rusty van had passed on the way to the RV campsite for the night. Crashing the motorcycle in the rain, Will is propelled into another world where his life is threatened by relentless fetches until Rowen, a girl his own age, saves him--using her waylight to find a snug. From that moment on, Will's life continues to be in danger. His arrival in The Perilous Realm was expected there and his new friends--Rowen's grandfather, the knight Finn, the Nightwanderer Moth, the raven Morrigan, and Shade the Wolf--are determined to help him discover and fulfill his mission. In the process, traveling on foot through the countryside, through towns and villages, and eventually into a landscape reminiscent of the Columbia Icefields in the Canadian Rockies, Will, Rowen, Nicholas, Finn and Shade (with Moth and Morrigan scouting and protecting from a distance) try to find the portal, the farhold, that will allow Will to return to his father and little sister. Caught in a looping storyshard, nearly consumed by seductive werefire, pursued by relentless Nightbane and Mordogs, Will and his companions have little time to sleep or eat as the Night King plans his next attack. Tiny things, like the flickering blue light of Sputter, the wisp, often make the difference between survival and defeat. Thomas Wharton's powers of invention make the realm of story Will has crashed into more real than the Untold, the world he left behind--so much so that we wonder, when Will finally finds a way back, if he'll take it.
    An enjoyable read
    When Will steals his father's motorcycle and has an accident, he mistakenly gets thrown into a world of Story. The world composed of various realms is made up of the stories we read in our world. Characters from stories exist there as real people.

    Will discovers that the story-world is in danger from the Night King and his minions. Will also discovers that he has the gift to be in the middle of important events, similar to those events any hero finds himself in. Along with Rowen (a girl with more importance to the world's fate than she thinks), Pendrake (Rowen's grandfather and mage [or loremaster as he is called], Shade (the talking wolf from Red Riding Hood with a slightly different appetite) and Finn (a Knight-Errant) Will sets out on a journey to find the Hidden Folk (the elven equivalent), and through them a way back into the Untold (the normal world.)

    On the way he enters a mysterious library, meets the servants of the Night King, confounds two trolls, meets a mage who has fallen to the werefire, and travels with Moth and Morrigan and numerous other companions, to be pursued by a terrible servant of the Night King - who act genuinely enough - and finally must choose whether to remain home or remain to save his friends.

    An enjoyable read for me, and I hope to find the sequel, as soon as it comes out.

    JOSEPH & THOMAS WHARTON (Garland Reference Library of the Humanities)

    List Price: $10.00

    Description


    A Manual of the Principles and Practice of Ophthalmic Medicine and Surgery

    General Books LLC

    List Price: $32.89
    Price: $32.89

    Description

    General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1847 Original Publisher: John Churchill Subjects: Medical / Ophthalmology Medical / Optometry Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: d. Genus IV. -- Compound External Ophthalmia. 696. The ophthalmiae, comprehended as species under this head, are the scrofulo-catarrhal, and catarrho-rheumatic. Scrofulo-catarrhal ophthalmia. 697- This is a combination of common scrofulous or phlyctenular ophthalmia and catarrhal; having sometimes more of the characters of the former, sometimes more of the characters of the latter, with occasionally an admixture of pustular ophthalmia. 698. Objective symptoms. -- This form of ophthalmia not being attended by any great intolerance of light, the eyelids are not spasmodically closed, but usually kept half open. Their borders are red and swollen, and perhaps nodulated, from enlargement of the glandular structures situated there, and the eyelashes are incrusted with dried Meibomian secretion, which is poured out in increased quantity. 699. The vascular injection of the conjunctiva, both pal- pebral and sclerotic, is very considerable, and, though with less uniformity, presents the catarrhal characters. There may be also some sclerotic injection. 700. Pustules or aphthae may present themselves on the sclerotic conjunctiva, and at the margin of the cornea, but the cornea itself may as yet be clear, or it may be the seat of onyx, or of phlyctenulae or ulceration. The phlyctenulae on the cornea usually reach a larger size than those which occur in common phlyctenular ophthalmia -- indeed, they mature into pustules, and bursting, leave large ulcers, with flabby, everted, and perhaps red edges, into which large fascicu...
    Salamander.

    DTV Deutscher Taschenbuch

    Description


    Hildegard Sings

    List Price: $4.95

    Description

    Hildegard Rhineheffer, the understudy for the lead in the opera company, has lost her voice. Can she recover in time to sing for the Queen? Uproarious illustrations make this an unforgettable story of a singer on the brink of stardom. Full color.

    Wharton Thomas News




    New services greet returning Guard members - Dailyrecord.com
    New services greet returning Guard membersAs a full-time recruiter for the National Guard assigned to the Morristown Armory, Thomas said he does not have to worry about finding work, but others in his unit did. Marine Lance Cpl. Richard Ornelas Jr., 21, of Wharton, said that when he returned

    Round 1 - Glen Helen - May 23
    Blake Wharton sixth, Tyla Rattray seventh, and Brett Metcalfe eighth. Jake Weimer is tenth, Austin Stroupe is 29th. The top four guys are bunching up. Barcia is leading, Canard is right on his rear, Pourcel a few bike lengths behind, and Dungey right

    Housing crisis may haunt Florida governor's race - MiamiHerald.com
    Housing crisis may haunt Florida governor's race''Sink has the DNA of a banker and McCollum has acquired some of the DNA because he represented bankers for so long,'' said Ken Thomas, an independent banking consultant in Miami who teaches at the Wharton School of Business.

    Why economists failed to predict the financial crisis - Middle East North Africa Financial Network
    Why economists failed to predict the financial crisis"It's not just that they missed it, they positively denied that it would happen," says Wharton finance professor Franklin Allen, arguing that many economists used mathematical models that failed to account for the critical roles that banks and other

    St. Thomas captures crown - MiamiHerald.com
    St. Thomas captures crownFort Lauderdale 3. Girls' team scores (Top 5 plus Broward): 1. Miami Jackson 60; 2. Pensacola Pine Forest 52.33; 3. Orlando Oak Ridge 51; 4. Tampa Wharton 41; 5. Satellite 40; 7. Fort Lauderdale 25; 12. Hallandale 15; 29. St. Thomas Aquinas 6.33; 30.

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    Thomas Wharton Jr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Thomas Wharton was born in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 1735. He was born into one of Philadelphia's most prominent early Quaker families. ...

    the Logogryph: goodbye
    3 comments Posted by Thomas Wharton at 6:52 PM. My blog about stories and storytelling, Notes from the ... 11 comments Posted by Thomas Wharton at 9:23 PM "As if everything in ...

    Thomas Wharton books on Infinity Books Japan
    Eric Korn, Guardian 'Wharton's prose style is flexible, poetic, inventive and always lucid. Beg uiling.' Elle 'Wharton's gothic adventure is gloriously inventive' FLAMINGO

    Thomas Wharton books on OldKidsBooks.com
    Wharton, Thomas Hildegard Sings. Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1991 0374332428 / 9780374332426 Unknown Binding As New Pictorial Cover, No DJ Unknown Binding ...

    Thomas Wharton (anatomist) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Thomas Wharton (1614–1673) was an English physician and anatomist best known for his ... Wharton was one of the very few physicians who remained at his post ...