The Ice Eaters

Ronald Conrad is a professor of English at Ryerson University in
Toronto.

The Ice Eaters is many things. In documentary fashion it shows us the inner workings of its subject, the business world. We follow Murray Elkin, public relations writer, as he attempts to outflank devious executives, the new women in the boardroom, cringing subordinates, and the physical hazards of the business lunch. As the recession of the early eighties closes in, this is indeed a “corporate jungle.”

But The Ice Eaters also takes us to a more literally dangerous place, the Yukon. Its people are less devious but the spirit of the place is dangerously seductive. Murray, who is also a novelist in search of a good story, falls prey to the lure of what Quebeckers call “le grand nord.” “You can’t help getting a little mystical up there,” he thinks — especially when Indian legend and recent eyewitness report that a giant meteor that has hit the earth will melt the permafrost and destroy the world. We see the beginnings of a government cover-up, and at this point are reading a disaster novel — even a piece of science fiction.

Another strain is the inner conflict of the writer: should Murray write yet another pot-boiler in his series of spy novels, or will the purity of the Yukon let him break through to serious fiction? Was he right to let his wife go insane back home as he pursued truth in the North, or is he the worthless little jerk her psychiatrist thinks he is? And why does he take notes every time he meets people? Is he living or is he researching?

The ensemble is entertaining enough, but is less than the sum of its parts. As disaster fiction or sci fi the book does not work, for large sections of it are so fully devoted to other things that we lose the thread of terror. As a study in psychology it is better, but is hampered by the stereotyping of minor characters. It is strongest as a documentary. Bruce Allen Powe, himself a public relations man, is of that genre of writers who take notes and give us all the facts. The novel may be too heavy on plot, like Murray Elkin’s potboilers, but Powe’s array of facts and his ability to convey the physical surface of things have placed him directly in a line of writers from Samuel Hearne to Arthur Hailey who practice the very Canadian approach that Northrop Frye calls our documentary tradition.