THE BIRTHDAY BOYS

In her 14th work of fiction, Bainbridge (An Awfully Big Adventure, 1991, etc.) reconstructs that most poignant of ill-fated journeys, Scott's 1912 South Pole expedition, in the voices of the five explorers who reached the Pole and died soon afterwards. The three-year trip was designed as a scientific expedition as well as a conquest of the Pole. In 1910 the Terra Nova, a converted whaling ship, was seen off with great fanfare in London and Cardiff. Bainbridge imagines an ebullient shipboard mood as the officers play schoolboy games in the wardroom, while in their quieter moments the younger officers fret over whether they are up to the challenge. In fact, they endure uncomplainingly the antarctic cold, treacherous terrain, and round-the-clock midwinter dark. (Bainbridge writes as though she'd traveled every numbing mile herself). These are God-fearing men, exulting in the chance ``to stand up and be counted'' for king and country, yet never mere caricatures of muscular Christianity. Bainbridge gives us five well-differentiated individuals. Especially complex is their leader, ``Con'' Scott, a disciplined yet big-hearted Royal Navy man who for a second loses control, yearning for a shootout, when he hears that Norwegian Roald Amundsen is ahead of them in the race. Sure enough, after a hellish final trek, Scott and company find a Norwegian flag at the Pole. Bainbridge ends her account with team member Oates, filled with morphine, making his celebrated stoic exit into the blizzard. Departing from contemporary woes, Bainbridge has found gold in the dreams of the last big-time explorers unaided by technology. A triumph of sympathetic imagination.