Even the daftest idea can make a wonderful book, if the writing is good enough, and here's the proof. In this totally absorbing and outstandingly original memoir, Jenny Diski weaves together the shiveringly immediate story of her two-week trip to Antarctica and the shudderingly fragmented story of her unhappy childhood - two journeys, one an attempt to escape from herself into an oblivion of eternal whiteness, the other an attempt to make sense of a jumble of suppressed memories which loom up at odd moments in her life as suddenly and as alarmingly as south sea icebergs. The spareness of the writing, leavened by an icicle-sharp sense of humour, make this book both difficult to put down and impossible to forget. A.W.