Dark Matter

Dark Matter is a by-the-books horror novel by Michelle Paver that could have used many more pages to develop its characters and themes.

The protagonist is Jack Miller, a middle-class young man who hates his job as a clerk and is in desperate need of purpose. So, when the opportunity of becoming a wireless operator in an expedition to the Arctic presents itself, he immediately jumps on board and travels with four other men to Gruhuken, a desolate place on the coast of a Norwegian Archipelago.

The novel is written in first-person, using Jack’s journal as the basis of the narrative. Early on, he writes about how he feels to be drifting through life, without a goal or purpose:

“I’m twenty-eight years old and I hate my life. I never have the time or the energy to work out how to change it. On Sundays I trail round a museum to keep warm, or lose myself in a library book, or fiddle with the wireless. But Monday’s already looming. And always I’ve got this panicky feeling inside, because I know I’m getting nowhere, just keeping myself alive.”

The expedition, then, sounds like a gift from the heavens to him, despite its dangers: he must remain for months in an isolated and perilous place with just four guys he doesn’t even like very much. The main point of contention between Jack and his companions lies in the discrepancy of their social class. While his colleagues went to Oxford, he barely has the money to buy everyone a drink when they meet for the first time to discuss the expedition. This also reflects on the language they use: as Jack remarks, while he says things are “okay”, his colleagues say things are “grand”.

Because he had a harsher life than his companions, the Arctic feels more enticing a place for him. Separated from everyone in the freezing cold wind of Gruhuken, money and social status appear to have less value. It’s no wonder that Jack first writes that the Arctic feels like “a land of dreams” wherein class “doesn’t matter so much.” He believes he will finally feel truly free there: “I think that’s what the Arctic means to me. I think that up here, I’ll be able to ‘breathe with both lungs’, as Mr Eriksson says: to see clearly for the first time in years Right through to the heart of things.”

What Gruhuken will eventually offer him, however, is not a pleasant sight. As they travel there, the stories about the place start to become ominous. Sailors talk about the “rar”, when men go mad and start killing each other and even themselves if left alone for too long. Even their captain even refuses to port there or at least go near the place.

Jack takes a while to see the true dangers that lurk beneath the stark beauty of Gruhuken. He quickly senses that what prevails there is the law of the jungle: it’s a place where the strong animals eat the weak. But for him, that’s just how life was in London, with the rich preying on the poor. The only difference now is that this is made crystal clear from everyone else to see: “I love Gruhuken. I love the clarity and the desolation. Yes, even the cruelty. Because it’s true. It’s part of life.”

His relationship with two of his colleagues, Algie and Gus, takes a great part of the novel’s first half. While he despises Algie, he loves Gus. While Jack finds Algie a fat, despicable, sadistic man, when describing Gus, he writes: “His features had a chiselled purity that made me think of Greek heroes. I wondered what it must be like to be so handsome.” The contrast between the two is constantly marked: “Gus and Algie are already asleep. Gus is frowning in his dreams. He looks young and noble, like the first officer over the top at the Somme. Algie is snoring. His thick red lips glisten with spit.” But what makes his relationship with them become more interesting is the fact that Jack gradually grows a platonic love for Gus while becoming jealous of Algie. He doesn’t simply admire his friend’s beauty, he “gets all choked” just by seeing his handwriting, he “pounces” when his name is mentioned by his friend, and even writes that their casual conversations “meant everything” for him.

It’s fitting and tragic, then, that Gus becomes the main reason Jack stays alone in Gruhuken after things start to go wrong. He remains there because the expedition means everything to Gus, and his gratitude would mean the world for him. Jack writes “I keep picturing what it’ll be like when he gets back. His blue eyes shining with gratitude and admiration. You did it, Jack. I didn’t think anyone could, but you pulled it off!”

Jack is just not entirely alone, however, because he has a furry companion: a young husky named Isaac. Their relationship makes the latter half of the book, as Jack grows ever dependent on Isaac, cherishing even the sounds the dog makes in their cabin. There’s also a ghost haunting them from time to time, but sadly that is the least interesting part of the story.

The horror aspect of Dark Matter is made of generic stuff and is mostly uneventful. The dogs howl to build tension, the ghost presents a deformity to make his figure more repulsive, and that’s it. Jack may describe it with strong terms (“Such malevolence. No mercy. No humanity. It belonged to the dark beyond humanity. It was rage without end.A black tide drowning.”) but the ghost mostly just stand there, scaring him. Jack may state categorically that the ghost means harm, but 200 pages in, and the ghost hasn’t done anything yet, besides starting ominously at things. The threat doesn’t seem genuine, the ghost’s apparitions start to follow the same patterns, and so the tension evaporates.

The element about the ghost that works is its connection with Jack’s realistic view of the world. He intended to leave London to find a place where class didn’t matter, where a man could be really free, a land of dreams. But what he discovers is a place just like London that functions as a microcosmos of that city: a place where some people still act cruelly and without repercussions, where violence reigns and big companies subjugate the common people, killing them if they are in the way of profit. This theme, however, feels tacked on. After all, the ghost doesn’t appear much to allow the discussion to develop. The ending, therefore, feels incredibly rushed, and not just thematically, as characters also appear out of nowhere and big events happen too fast.

In the end, Dark Matter is a simple horror story that could have been much better if it developed more its themes and characters, leaving them more room to breathe – and be frightened.

July 20, 2020.