THE UNVEILING

A luxury trip to Antarctica goes horribly wrong in Barry’s triumph of literary horror.

Striker isn’t surprised to be the only Black passenger on the cruise to Antarctica. She’s used to being the only Black person in a given space, having grown up with white adoptive parents. While her fellow tourists are wealthy sightseers, Striker is on the ship for business; she’s a location scout for the film industry, hired for a production company making a film about the disastrous Shackleton expedition. As the group is taken on kayak trips and history lectures, Striker observes her extremely privileged fellow passengers with the same wry detachment as the local wildlife. But when a freak accident leaves the group stranded on one of Antarctica’s many remote islands, and they regroup in a shelter left by some long-forgotten expedition, the natural environment quickly turns against them. For Striker, who came to Antarctica burdened with heavy secrets and is now surrounded by the remains of stranded explorers, the past and present start to melt together as she has terrifying visions of shipwreck survivors resorting to unspeakable acts of violence. Barry’s desolate setting perfectly reflects Striker’s memories of growing up Black surrounded by whiteness, and the ways in which her identity was always reflected back at her through the warped lens of systemic racism. The line between what can be attributed to the supernatural, with the past literally coming back to haunt the survivors, and what is simply Striker losing her grip on reality is wisely kept blurry as the reader begins to question their own senses.

A terrifying must-read set at the ends of the Earth.