The Curiosity

I’m usually game for science/suspense novels especially having to do with Arctic exploration, paleontology/anthropology or those of another era, including people or creatures stuck in the ice (or even sap for those “Jurassic Park” readers). Yeah let me at those books!

Stephen Kiernan’s debut “The Curiosity,” published last month, came right at a good time for such a summer read. It’s not giving anything away to say it’s about a man swept overboard into the Arctic Ocean in 1906, who’s found frozen deep in the ice by a group of modern-day scientists and is brought back to life to today’s world.

The ramifications of this are huge and the novel interestingly delves into all sorts of issues: how the frozen man views today’s technological advances in contrast to the world he left behind; what his reanimation means for the field of cryonics; and the moral, ethical and religious questions it raises about humanity and bringing back a dead person to life.

The story unfolds through four rotating narrators; there’s the frozen man himself (Jeremiah) who comes back to life and slowly regains his memory of his former life as a judge, husband and father; and Dr. Kate Philo, who’s scientific team made the discovery and comes to know and love her subject albeit a bit too personally; and her boss the egotistical Erastus Carthage who’s after power, glory and money from the discovery; and lastly, Daniel Dixon the slimy journalist who ends up playing a heavy hand in the novel’s crash-down ending.

All in all, I enjoyed the novel, and thought it a good summer yarn, one that raises some interesting dilemmas, and in places was a good page-turner. The author has a good ear for writing dialog and conjuring the transformative story. Just a few problems popped up for me: the middle of the novel seemed to lose steam and lag a bit and I thought it could’ve been edited shorter than its 432 pages. It seems to get a bit redundant in the middle, and two of the narrators (Carthage and Dixon) I looked forward to much less than the two main narrators, Jeremiah and Dr. Philo. Perhaps in this respect their characters were a bit too black-and-white, between being bad guys than good guys.

I also had a few credibility issues here and there with the narrative (beyond the premise), but I guess I could possibly believe the love story theme towards the end between scientist and subject.

After all, remember Timothy Hutton in “Iceman” in 1984? It was similar in concept. Hutton plays an anthropologist whose team finds a body of a prehistoric man in ice who comes to life. And Hutton finds himself defending the man against those who want to dissect his life in the name of science. There’s a love there for another persecuted human being, am I right? And always in these tales, the scientist will go down fighting. Meanwhile the modern-day world, which ruins everything, is viewed as awful.

Interestingly author Stephen Kiernan says the idea for “The Curiosity” came from the James Taylor song “Frozen Man,” which he heard in 1992. I guess I’m not too familiar with that song, but I have to give Kiernan credit for letting his novel thaw over these many years. “The Curiosity” got me interested in the ice again, earlier eras and the primordial goo that makes up life and ties all that lives together. Way to go, an enticing debut!

PS. I like the book cover of the Canadian edition (pictured above) much better than the U.S. edition (at left), which seems with the clothes spread out almost clown-like and perhaps confusing. The Canadian edition is more fetching and dignified of the frozen man. What do you think? And are you curious to read “The Curiosity”?