A beautiful written book with an amazing landscape would recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy for an honest review

I wanted to love this book, I enjoyed Stef Penney's previous novel very much, this didn't grip me in quite the same way. I found the characters quite dull and the story slow in places. The depictions of the Arctic were the highlight of the book

With an interesting and original central character, Flora Mackie, who first visits the Arctic Circle with her whaler father at the tender age of just 12, and whom we follow throughout her often turbulent life, this well-written and well-researched novel gives an atmospheric and evocative portrait of Arctic exploration in the Victorian era. It’s a powerful, insightful and well-observed examination of what drives men – and in this case a woman – to risk everything and undergo unimaginable hardship to discover new frontiers. I found myself gripped by the narrative and found it all a compelling read.
But - and there are a few buts. The historical and period detail is well done, and the descriptions vivid, but it sometimes felt quite anachronistic, with Flora and her female friends being rather too modern in their outlook and attitudes. And that brings us to the sex. And it’s a lot of sex. Graphic, and to my mind, quite unnecessarily pornographic sex. Another reviewer has called it “Jilly Cooper on ice”. I may be wrong, of course, perhaps some Victorian women were as agile and adventurous as Flora, but in the context of the novel these all too frequent scenes just don’t ring true. I also felt that the novel was rather too disjointed and jumped about too much in time and space, leading to quite an incoherent narrative at times. A whole strand of the book which deals with Flora as an old woman adds nothing to the story.
However, in spite of my criticisms, I did enjoy the novel, and was intrigued to find out that some of it mirrors reality quite closely. Quite by coincidence I have just finished a biography of Minik: the New York Eskimo, which features explorer Robert Peary, and much of that real-life story is reflected in Penney’s novel. A nice conjunction.

What do you do when your hometown is beaten by a dreadful heatwave? You read one of Stef Penney’s stories to find yourself transported to the most northern, snowy and chilly places of the earth.

Under a Pole Star is a fictional recreation of the first expeditions who went to the North Pole in the late 1800s, journeys that were equally thrilling and dangerous. The main character is Flora Mackie, a motherless girl who, from the age of twelve, is taken by his father to Ellesmere Island on his whaler, spending most of her younger years living with the Eskimos. However, as she grows up into a young woman, his father no longer thinks a ship full of men is suitable for her, so she is left in Britain to get a formal education. But, for Flora, the North is her home and, despite women don’t travel to such places, she sets up an unprecedented expedition, leaded by herself.

I have enjoyed so much reading about these expeditions. First of all, they had to find sponsors to cover all the costs, to whom they would later named newly discovered peaks and lakes after. The men spent the winter in the Eskimos’ villages trading, packing and planning for their trips, which started in springtime and must inevitably include Eskimo hunters with their dog sleds, because the British and American men were unable to provide food or transportation for themselves under such conditions.

And then, from a humanly approach, the explorers were under the pressure of discovering something to bring back home, to have a successful adventure that claimed new land to their countries, to discover new species, new islands, new whatever; and such pressure may lead some of them to embellish their notes up to the point of deceiving the general public in order to get new funds for further journeys. All in an atmosphere of competition among the different expeditions in a land where the best you can do to survive is work together.

I could be talking about the expeditions forever, but coming back to the main storyline, I loved to see a female character leading groups of men into the Arctic. Everyone was really surprised to see a woman there – except for the Eskimos, who knew Flora since she was a child and could speak with her in their own language – so she had to look and act severe to be respected. The story also includes a romance between Flora and Jakob de Beyn, an American geologist who meets in Greenland, and goes back and forth between the two, one in America and the other in Britain. They share a deep fascination for those remote lands and the lack of attachment to the rest of the world, and this understanding leads to a unique love story.

I can’t help but recommend this book that, for me, has everything: historical notes about the golden age of explorers in the Arctic, a woman assuming what at the time was a man’s role, beautiful but indomitable lands, and a delightful romance.

The Arctic ice is its own character in this novel. Flora and Jakob are not the most sympathetic of characters but they are compellingly evoked and so as their story unfolds the reader is swept along with their obsession. Well done.

This is a combination of an old-fashioned adventure book and a love story set in the at the end of the 19th century. It tells the story of Flora and Jacob and how they met, fell in love, parted and met again - overlaid with voyages of exploration to the Arctic and peopled with the colourful characters they both met during their eventful lives.
It is a long book and would probably be the better for being cut by about a quarter.
Exciting though!

I enjoyed this book on so many levels - the sweeping landscape, the life of Flora which was so unusual for that time, her relationships and how her life affected them. Full of characters and situations you can really get your teeth into.