It’s 1916. Across Europe, young men are dying on muddy battlefields; in Dublin, Republican rebels are planning an uprising. But inside the rarefied walls of the city’s Trinity College, claret is flowing and a polar expedition to recover a legendary giant’s bones is being planned. Smith’s second novel is a jovial tale of post-Victorian adventure complete with redacted swearwords and an indomitable dog. With Trinity’s eligible men off fighting the kaiser, it’s left to three incompetent undergrads to follow a map to the resting place of Bernard McNeill, a man from Tyrone who grew to 8ft 9in and died while cheffing on an Arctic expedition. So self-regarding Fitzmaurice, hopeless medic Rafferty and nature-loving Crozier head north with an eccentric crew, a stowaway suffragette and Fitzmaurice’s haughty pet iguana on a journey that does not go as expected. Smith’s characterisation is broad, and some of his comic set pieces are plain silly. But he spins a good story, whether describing the savage sea, the horrors of primitive surgery or a “holiday camp cacophony” of seals. It’s a pleasant jaunt that mixes nostalgia for the age of exploration with the odd dash of social commentary.
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