Icefields

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Wharton’s first novel is absolutely stunning. The Alberta native
writes about the history of Jasper and the Rocky Mountain glacial
grandeur during the turn of the century and the coming of the railway.
The subject matter is transformed by the author’s poetic prose into a
fusion of his own interests—mountaineering, geology, history, and
poetry. The frequent tense and voice changes are handled with utmost
grace and skill.

Ned Byrne, a physician with the railway, has developed an obsession
with the Arcturus Glacier high above the Jasper chalet. Byrne is driven
by an image he saw years before of a figure frozen into a crevasse on
the glacier. (Wharton’s writing captures the tight, shining,
splintering feeling of the ice, the brittle cold, the unpredictability
of vast and shifting masses.) A young Scottish woman, Elspeth, works at
the chalet and falls in love with Byrne. Her relationship with the
doctor is mirrored by the affair between Hal, a young Canadian poet, and
Freya, a self-confident reporter. (Wharton permits his characters their
own voices, into which he interjects his omniscient narrator—a
structure that maintains an effective counterpoint throughout.)

Icefields won the Commonwealth Writers’ Award as well as numerous
accolades throughout the country. Wharton has made a brilliant debut;
his next work is eagerly awaited.