Cold Coast (Robyn Mundy, Ultimo)

It’s 1932. Ivanna ‘Wanny’ Woldstad longs to enter the male-dominated world of hunting and trapping. An independently minded woman, she runs her own taxi in Tromsø, in Northern Norway. A chance meeting brings her into contact with Anders Sæterdal, a trapper heading out to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Wanny manages to persuade a reluctant Anders to take her on as a partner. And so begins a year of adventure, wonder and incredible hardship. The unlikely partners shoot bears, trap foxes and battle the unforgiving cold. Over time, Anders puts aside his male prejudices and comes to grudgingly admire Wanny for her pluck, courage and ingenuity. Their partnership matures into one based on respect and mutual appreciation. Based on the real life of trapper Ivanna Woldstad, Robyn Mundy’s Cold Coast is a remarkable achievement. It tells Woldstad’s story in a gorgeously intimate prose, with page after page of stunning nature writing. Mundy has clearly studied her subject matter in the field as the descriptions of wildlife, landscape and weather sing in a distinct poetic voice. (An interlocking narrative follows the life of a young fox.) While there are plenty of descriptions of killing, skinning and eviscerating animals, they are thankfully not gratuitous or stomach churning. Cold Coast is a perfectly balanced novel mixing natural history, biography and feminist concerns into an aesthetically pleasing whole.

Chris Saliba is the co-owner of North Melbourne Books and a freelance reviewer.

Category: Reviews