Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Excerpt from No Horizon Is So Far by Ann Bancroft, Liv Arnesen, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

No Horizon Is So Far by Ann Bancroft, Liv Arnesen

No Horizon Is So Far

An Extraordinary Journey Across Antarctica

by Ann Bancroft, Liv Arnesen
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • First Published:
  • Aug 1, 2003, 272 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Aug 2004, 253 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Print Excerpt


That evening, we watched the high Antarctic sun dip slightly and the sky grow pink, a clear indication that winter was coming. The sun never sets during the summers, so the evening hour is a long flirtation between the sun and the horizon, like lovers who gaze at each other from across a room but never touch. Wisps of cloud turned violet and streaks of sapphire blue appeared behind the peaks of the white-capped mountains with giant glaciers suspended between them. Just beyond the black, rounded humps of the mountain called the Matador (for it looks like a bullfighter's cap) there was even a bit of red in the rocks. I would not have traded this sight of the Antarctic sky for a thousand Caribbean sunsets. For in Antarctica, there is nothing between you and the sky - no trees, no buildings, no poles, no electric lines. You can see for hundreds of kilometers along the horizon, where the sky meets the ice under your feet. It seems that the sky is not only above you, but also next to you and in front of you. You are walking into the sky as much as you are walking on the snow and ice.

Even the dangerous jagged crevasses around us reflected light and shadow in beautiful patterns. That is the paradox of this continent, so gorgeous and so dangerous at the same time. Ann looked at me, and I could tell she was thinking the same things. She smiled and said, "Who could've known that Hell would be so beautiful?"

From No Horizon Is So Far by Ann Bancroft, Liv Arnesen and Cheryl Dahle.  Copyright Ann Bancroft, Liv Arnesen and Cheryl Dahle 2003.  All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher, Da Capo Press.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Girls of Good Fortune
    by Kristina McMorris
    Brave the Shanghai tunnels in this tale of love, identity, and resilience passed through generations.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Erased
    by Anna Malaika Tubbs

    In Erased, Anna Malaika Tubbs recovers all that American patriarchy has tried to destroy.

  • Book Jacket

    The Original Daughter
    by Jemimah Wei

    A dazzling debut by Jemimah Wei about ambition, sisterhood, and family bonds in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore.

  • Book Jacket

    Songs of Summer
    by Jane L. Rosen

    A young woman crashes a Fire Island wedding to find her birth mother—and gets more than she bargained for.

  • Book Jacket

    Awake in the Floating City
    by Susanna Kwan

    A debut novel about an artist and a 130-year-old woman bound by love and memory in a future, flooded San Francisco.

Who Said...

These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B W M in H M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.