SOURCE: "A Man in the Wilderness," in Times Literary Supplement, February 11, 1994, p. 20.

[In the following review, Melmoth calls Dickey's To the White Sea "a bitterly cold novel" that "is not for those of a nervous disposition."]

To the White Sea is a bitterly cold novel that seals the outback gothic of Deliverance in a crust of permafrost. As in the earlier book, James Dickey's milieu is wilderness, his concern less with the struggle against the elements, more with the way men's relations with other men can deteriorate in extreme situations. At the same time as admiring the human capacity for survival, it takes a dim view of human nature.

As if to pre-empt its being read as another allegory about the nasty, brutish and short thing we call life, the novel's opening is clearly located in space and time: Tinian Island, March 8, 1945. Muldrow, a tail gunner in the...