The Unveiling

A Novel

By: Quan Barry

Narrated by: Janina Edwards

From the award-winning author of We Ride Upon Sticks and When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East, a genre-bending novel of literary horror set in Antarctica that explores abandonment, guilt, and survival in the shadow of America’s racial legacy.

Striker isn’t entirely sure she should be on this luxury Antarctic cruise. A Black film scout, her mission is to photograph potential locations for a big-budget movie about Ernest Shackleton’s doomed expedition. Along the way, she finds private if cautious amusement in the behavior of both the native wildlife and the group of wealthy, mostly white tourists who have chosen to spend Christmas on the Weddell Sea.

But when a kayaking excursion goes horribly wrong, Striker and a group of survivors become stranded on a remote island along the Antarctic Peninsula, a desolate setting complete with boiling geothermal vents and vicious birds. Soon the hostile environment will show each survivor their true face, and as the polar ice thaws in the unseasonable warmth, the group’s secrets, prejudices, and inner demons will also emerge, including revelations from Striker’s past that could irrevocably shatter her world.

With her signature lyricism and humor, Quan Barry offers neither comfort nor closure as she questions the limits of the human bonds that connect us to one another, affirming there are no such things as haunted places, only haunted people. Gripping, lucid, and imaginative, The Unveiling is an astonishing ghost story about the masks we wear and the truths we hide even from ourselves.

What did I just listen too? I want a refund please

Bizarre fever dream that wouldn’t end fast enough followed by a religious awakening to what exactly? I don’t know…

Unexpectedly surrealist and psychedelic. interesting, but challenging.

First things first: the description of this book you'll see in some professional reviews - "Get Out meets The White Lotus" - is misleading. Yes, those are the bones: a Black woman on an exotic excursion finds herself surrounded by feckless, wealthy tourists - but that take doesn't properly account for what this author is up to.

It's an ambitious, smart piece of writing that's perhaps a little too ambitious: "The Unveiling" is a relatively slim novel, but the author dives deep into a trove of hearty themes. Race, class and gender are only the starting points: this brief book chews furiously on foster care, transgenderism, polar exploration history, colonization, mental health, infidelity, teen pregnancy; much more. All are approached with care and from interesting angles, but it's a big menu which requires ambitious strategic choices on the part of the author.

In this case - and here's what the novel's pitch doesn't capture - the author wraps their arms around that hefty mass of juicy material by plunging the narrative into territory which can only be described as psychedelic and objectively surrealist. Reality quickly breaks down; non sequiturs and absurdist vignettes worthy of Samuel Beckett take over.

It's an honest reflection of the subject matter - these people are losing it in the most alien and hostile landscape, after all - but be prepared, reader. This is closer to "Get Out meets The Sound and The Fury" than "Get Out meets The White Lotus." And, given the titillating pitch, it's a little unsatisfying.

Props for ambition, evocative situations and striking prose, but it's a bit of a challenge. Be advised.

No story here

This is a long series of digressions unified only by a weak and unrealistic fragment of a plot.

No point to this story

Don’t waste your money or time listening to this book. Fail to see the point of it.

What did I just listen to??

This novel is like a car crash, a million things going on at once, time is distorted and nothing makes sense. I had to push myself to listen to the last half of this book. The author has taken too many ideas, racism, mental illness, childhood trauma and the horrors of surviving in the most inhospitable place on earth. The characters are nobody I would want to meet and I had no investment in them or what happened to them.
A huge let down for a book I have been waiting for