The Dark Beneath the Ice
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The Dark Beneath the Ice
We step into Aunt Jen’s living room, a cool, leafy cavern. Gray light filters through plants that spill from shelves and dangle from hanging planters. The piano, a mass of dark, carven wood, is the only surface that isn’t draped with fronds or vines. The little radio on the side table next to the old maroon couch fills the room with earnest, thoughtful conversation.
“I’ve set up the spare room for you,” Aunt Jen says, pulling the patio door closed behind us. “You can get yourself settled in a bit and then we’ll have a cup of tea.”
Hugging my pillow, my laptop case banging against my leg, I follow her up the stairs. There are empty spots on the wall where pictures of my parents used to hang. I feel for my phone in my pocket. Dad hasn’t called. I hope he will. I hope he won’t.
The room hasn’t changed: the window looking down onto the garden and the river beyond it, a twin bed with a threadbare quilt, moss green walls, a white dresser topped with a menagerie of little china animals—a tiger, a monkey, a turkey, a horse. Mom told me they belonged to my grandmother, who died when I was still a baby. I used to play with them when I was little.
“There’s plenty of space in the dresser if you want to unpack,” Aunt Jen offers tentatively. “It’s never fun, living out of a suitcase.”
I set down the laptop case and fluff my pillow a couple of times before arranging it on the bed, trying to avoid her gaze.
“Well. I’ll go put the kettle on, Mare bear, okay? Take your time.”
“It’s Marianne, please, Aunt Jen.” But she’s already out the door.
I sink down on the bed, which creaks under me. The rest of my life is unrecognizable, but everything here is the same. It’s like I’ve stepped into some parallel universe. Like any second I’ll hear my parents laughing downstairs as Jen pours glasses of wine, and none of this will have happened.
Marianne is having a very tough time. She has given up ballet dancing, is not popular at school, and now her parents are separating. At the beginning of The Dark Beneath the Ice, Marianne is dropped off to stay with her aunt without explanation, and she’s frightened because strange things seem to be happening around her. She has managed her fear with a visualization of calm, cool water sometimes with ice over it to keep her safe and secure. Now she is having dreams of drowning, and the weather is not helping as it has been raining so much that flooding is a real possibility. High school is challenging, and she just wants to finish all her exams and get to summer vacation.
As more bizarre incidents follow, Marianne becomes more frantic and afraid of what is happening; it seems that she is being followed by a ghost. Marianne is surprised when Rhiannon makes overtures of friendship since she is the only Goth at school and holds herself apart from the other students after recently transferring to the school. Rhiannon also prefers to be called Ron.
While it is comforting to have someone to talk to, events escalate and become both more frequent and more obvious. Marianne is afraid that everyone around her is in danger, especially after an attempt to contact the ghost leads to an open attack. After this, Marianne and Ron work together to find out what is happening while growing both individually and together in the process.
The Dark Beneath the Ice is Amelinda Bérubé’s first novel. The story starts at a high pitch and maintains this through most of the narrative being told almost exclusively from Marianne’s perspective. Much of this is stream of consciousness, including all the doubts and fears faced by teens trying to deal with their complex lives. The story fills in many details by having Marianne remember incidents from the past in such a way as to allow the story to move along and to create tension effectively for the supernatural and mysterious events depicted.
The description of the thoughts of a teen facing a set of terrifying issues is completely believable as are the interactions of Marianne with her parents and peers and especially with her new friend Ron (Rhiannon) throughout the story. Even though Marianne’s parents are separating, this family happening is not the central issue of the novel. More importantly, Marianne has gaps in her memory, is waking up to find that she has broken things, hears a voice and is sent to see a doctor while she is afraid to tell him what is really going on. She is sensibly afraid that she is going to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital as her mother was when younger and has done voluntarily at the beginning of the novel.
The story really follows Marianne’s figuring out what is going on as new events occur and she thinks through the causes. Readers are given information gradually while not all the details are ever filled in. The ending is hopeful after a satisfying solution to the haunting that allows Marianne to develop with a more grown up attitude and the real possibility of flourishing in her future. Ron becomes more important in the last half of the story, and their relationship, while tentative, grows realistically.
There is one jarring aspect to the novel. About halfway through, there are two clear references to the location being Ottawa with a further statement later. The allusion to flooding does not really fit with the rivers in Ottawa. It would have been more gratifying if the story was either clearly set in Ottawa throughout or that it never stated a specific location as in the beginning of the novel.
The Dark Beneath the Ice is a gripping story of supernatural activities in a realistic setting. Adolescence is a frightening time of life, and stories like this can support those struggling to find their own path and trying to fit in with a very demanding group of peers. In short – a good read, a sinister scenario that is revealed slowly and leads to an uplifting conclusion, a pretty good first novel.
Willow Moonbeam, a cataloguing librarian and former community college math professor, lives in Toronto, ON, surrounded by books and yarn and becoming more obsessed with knitting shawls.