Book Review: The Last Cold Place by Naira de Gracia

I’ve been really into audiobooks for about two or three years now, and something I’ve learned in that time is that the narrator really makes or breaks the book. Sometimes I have to DNF within minutes or even seconds if something about either the narrator’s voice or the recording quality sets off my misophonia.

In the case of The Last Cold Place by Naira de Gracia, I knew immediately that I didn’t love the narrator, Aven Shore, and in fact it turned out I had recently DNFed another Shore-narrated book, only in part because of the narration. But I figured I could work with her voice for this book, since the subject matter was so interesting and I needed this book for a challenge.

Little did I realize that as the book went on, the mismatch to Shore’s voice and de Gracia’s words would just get bigger and bigger.

To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Shore’s voice. It just has a dreamy and at times almost mumbly quality that would be great for sleep tracks and meditations, not so much for non-fiction where I want to actually learn a bit about the subject matter! I found it really hard to focus on her narration, especially if there was other noise competing with her voice (such as when I was showering. Yes, I have a speaker in my bathroom so I can listen to audiobooks while I shower).

On to the actual book. The Last Cold Place is about de Gracia’s first field season in Antarctica, where she was studying penguins. It is much more about her experience as a scientist, and about the history of Antarctica, than about the penguins themselves. You will learn a bit about penguins, and the krill they eat, and the seabirds and seals they share their environment with, but I would not say that it is primarily a book about penguins. It’s very much a memoir.

If you’ve ever been curious what it’s like to do a field study, especially in a remote and/or inhospitable place, this book will be a great read for you. de Gracia does not shy away from the reality of life in Antarctica; the scarcity of showers and fresh food, the perils of sharing a very small space with the same people with limited options to get away, the cold, and the penguin shit.

Ah yes. The shit. de Gracia likes the word shit. It’s a great word. It’s also an incongruous word coming out of Aven Shore’s calm and dreamy mouth. When de Gracia writes about male seals beating the shit out of each other, and then Shore reads it, there’s a real cognitive dissonance. There’s violence and blood and wild animals, but I feel more like I should be hearing about a tranquil garden path that I am walking towards.

Seriously. Shore is an award-winning narrator. I can see why she’d be a popular choice for reading a woman-authored memoir, and in fact the other book I DNFed with her as the narrator was an AFAB* queer person’s memoir. But her voice just don’t work for remembrances of penguin shit and seal violence.

Amongst her own memories of her time doing penguin science, de Gracia shares about past exploration of Antarctica, the history of science and conservation on the continent and its surrounding waters, the ecosystem. It provides a lot of context for the importance of her work, while also taking a little time to discuss the fact that science has to somehow prove its importance, that we frequently only care to study and conserve a species if we can somehow point to some benefit to humans. Would de Gracia even be able to study penguins at all if they weren’t a charismatic megafauna?

The sad/funny thing is that after all the books I had to push through to complete the SAL/SPL/KCLS book bingo challenge this summer, I had declared this month “Self-Indulgence September” and said I was only going to read fun non-fiction books (and be quick to DNF fiction books that didn’t spark joy, too). But of course even my “fun” books about animals keep me grounded in reality. de Gracia’s work was funded by NOAA. She writes about the crew reacting to Trump’s 2016 election, and then towards the end of the book, about reductions to the scope of the research after she left — how much worse is it now, in Trump’s second term, with federal funding getting slashed right and left?

Not to get all political on main (she says on the blog where she reviews queer and social justice themed books right and left), but something on my mind recently is the deep uncuriosity (is that even a word? the writer asks) in conservative circles. If there’s not a direct tie to human quality of life or profit, they simply don’t care. Hell, they don’t even always care about human quality of life (somethingsomething mRNA vaccine research canceled) (yes I’m using a lot of parentheticals in this review, it IS Self-Indulgence September). I honestly think it’s amazing that in the past there’s been funding for research on things like duck penises. What better show of how much wealth our country has, than to spend it on just knowing things to know things?

Oh, yeah, I mean, we could spend it on universal healthcare and basic income and decide that housing is a human right…

Wait, weren’t we talking about penguins?

Anyway. The Last Cold Place is a testament to the perseverance of people who are willing to forego the creature comforts many of us take for granted (hot showers, fresh vegetables, clean clothes) in order to determine the impacts of krill fisheries and climate change on penguins. Because they care. Because they are curious. Because they can. Or they could.

Read this to remember what it was like when our government cared about penguins, too. But don’t read the audio version if you can avoid it.

*Assigned Female at Birth.

CWs and TWs: Animal injury and death. Blood. Alcohol use. Memories of the 2016 election. Feces (I’m sorry, shit) and vomit. Discussions of colonizer behavior.

Source and Format: I borrowed the audiobook from King County Library System.

Reading Challenge Prompts

Book Riot: Read a book based solely on its setting. I’ve started another reading challenge that I’ll post about soon (I promise there’s a good reason why it’s not in my trackers), and I needed a book set in Antarctica. This was the first book I found that was written for an adult audience (the others were books about penguins for kids).

Reading Challenge Progress

Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 14 of 25, no bingos.

Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 20 of 25, 2 bingos.

Book Riot: 16 of 24.

Physical TBR: 8 of 12.

World of Whimm: 21 of 24, 6 bingos.