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krpalmer ([personal profile] krpalmer) wrote2021-05-11 08:41 pm
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From the (Library e-)Bookshelf: Good Dogs Don't Make It to the South Pole

My municipal library’s ebook lending services have been useful in providing me with new books to happen on and read, but as with the library itself I’ve found myself signing out much more nonfiction than fiction. All the comments that reading fiction builds empathy and broadens a person in general do weigh on me; the sense that these days I resort to “fiction” in formats long looked at askance by anyone able to take new chances and put the effort into reading isn’t that encouraging.

A few novels have wound up in a “save for later” list, though, and at last, instead of signing out one more nonfiction book I took a chance on fiction. The description of Hans-Olav Thyvold’s Good Dogs Don’t Make It to the South Pole had caught my attention, with a dog named Tassen and his master’s widow dealing with loss by looking into Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition. Once I’d started reading I accepted the familiar conceit of Tassen narrating, and then just nodded along with a surprise some chapters in distinguishing him a bit further from impressions of other “dog narrators.”

Part of what added to my first interest in the book was my awareness of the historical event investigated, even if I’d picked it up through nonfiction. When Tassen and Mrs. Thorkildsen visited the preserved polar ship Fram early on I went so far as to remember when I managed to step on that vessel’s deck myself. I also reflected a bit on how Amundsen had made it all look easy; where previous polar explorers had turned around and maybe made it back intact, he’d sailed through the Northwest Passage, gone to the South Pole, and later on been on the first dirigible to pass over the North Pole without considerable doubts developing over the claim. As the novel took on just how many dogs Amundsen had killed according to plan heading for the South Pole, though, I did consider it also bringing up the unfortunate second party to get there every so often, but not mentioning how Robert Falcon Scott had included a dog team in his complicated strategy but been intent on not killing those dogs for food even as he sacrificed ponies for that purpose. Savage interpretations of his fate may not have built up Amundsen as much as intended as just kept Scott stuck in memory; I have to admit to happening on and seeking out more nuanced efforts.

In the end the novel dealt with bigger and more universal things than polar expeditions, and was interesting to me for that too. It might well have been a bit more appealing than some “polar expedition novels” I’ve read, and I also noted it was a translated work that read more appealing than the translated prose I’ve worked through of late. (The translator’s note at the end happens to mention “Tassen” is a common dog’s name in Norwegian, but efforts to find an English equivalent wound up just leaving the meaning for that note itself.) I was left wondering all the same when I’d get around to my next new novel, given the ebook I signed out afterwards was nonfiction.

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