The Island that Moved

Plate tectonics may not be up there with dinosaurs, mummies and the human body in the league table of most popular non-fiction subjects, but in Meredith Hooper’s skilful hands it is clearly explained in an imaginative way. She tells the story of a remote island in Antarctica, forced up through the sea bed as the plates surrounding Gondwana split apart 150 million years ago. The island is a composite of many such islands that lie off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, each one covered in a thick layer of ice and snow. The richness of language colours the text with an enthusiast’s passion for the subject as she explains the forces that shape the earth: ‘slowly grinding forward… crunching in, plastering on… blocky hunks and ripped-off lumps’. As the geological time scale moves forward the island goes through harsh climatic change as the ice builds up and recedes, life forms disappearing and returning. Continental drift, earthquakes and glaciers are also explained in the book. The inspiration for the book was one of several research trips made to Antarctica in company with the artist deLeiris and a fleet of geophysicists, seismologists and palaeobotanists, and recorded in her inspirational Antarctic Journal.