The Art of Breaking Ice

Nel Law is many things: an ageing menopausal woman, a lonely homemaker, an artist – but what she always finds herself reduced to is the wife of famed polar explorer Phil Law, whose role as the director of Australia’s Antarctic expeditions leaves Nel isolated at home for months on end. But when Phil helps her sneak onto his latest expedition, she steps into a new role, one that is equal parts momentous and thrilling: the first Australian woman to step foot on Antarctica. What begins as an exciting new frontier for her art – painting polar landscapes for her husband and penguins for the eccentric Dr Harris – is quickly revealed to be so much more, as her presence on the expedition not only threatens the foundations of the patriarchal world of polar exploration, but also puts her own marriage in doubt.

With The Art of Breaking Ice, Rachel Mead has transformed the true history of Nellie and Phillip Law into something simultaneously broader and more personal than its source material. On one hand it’s a story about the twilight of Australia’s heroic age of masculine polar exploration in the early 1960s, but on the other, it’s a simple story about love, marriage and the different faces we wear. It brings in so many different concepts – art, adventure, misogyny and menopause – and seamlessly weaves them together into a single narrative full of vivid characters and historical texture. Sometimes the story feels too condensed, with major plot beats happening in quick succession with little time for contemplation in between, but even this is a testament to the Antarctic world Mead has created on the page, in which I just wanted to linger long after each chapter ended.

If you’re looking for a wintery read with beautiful descriptions of Antarctica and a clear feminist message, look no further than The Art of Breaking Ice.