[It] almost seems that Thomas Keneally, on a slow day, picked up a copy of "The Survivor"—his earlier Antarctic novel—turned the plot over in his mind awhile, and decided to rework it with a few new twists. In "The Survivor" a middle-aged man reflected upon the disaster that overcame the leader of his South Pole expedition, and tried to deal with his own guilt, which grew out of his brief affair with the leader's wife. In "Victim of the Aurora," an old man in a nursing home refelcts on the disaster that occurred to his South Pole expedition (this time a murder). But at the periphery, once again, is a leader troubled by his wife's infidelity with one of his men; and the man is consumed with self-reproach.

The shift of emphasis has changed a story of character (of the effects of guilt, the averted gaze...