This is a novel about obsession. I often like to approach novels I am unfamiliar with by just plunging into the first page, rather than read the dusk jacket. I am so glad I did with this one. I was pleasantly surprised when my predictions as I read turned out all wrong. I like being fooled and outwitted by a good book. Never did I expect the twists and turns in this book!

Sym is an awkward teenager. She doesn’t fit in at school. The other girls think she is a prude because she hasn’t had a boyfriend, a first kiss and especially not sex. Sym is okay with all this. She knows she is not ready and doesn’t rush to do anything just to fit in. She is also going deaf. To make things worse her father is dead. He lost his mind and the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. Poor Sym was there through it all. Even when he forgot who she was. She develops an imaginary friend to help her cope with her loneliness (”Titus” Oates a famous explorer of the Antarctic.)

Thank heavens for Uncle Victor, though. He pays for the funeral and moves in with Sym and her mom. He has always been someone Sym has looked up to. A very smart man, he encourages Sym’s fascination in Antartica. He invites Sym and her mom on a trip to Paris, but at the last minute Sym’s mom can’t find her passport and must stay behind. Uncle Victor says it will be even better this way. At this point I started worrying that this book may be a Lolita spinoff. Older man likes younger girl and buys her affection with material objects and attention. After a few days in Paris, Uncle Victor begins to reveal bigger plans. They are going on a two week trip to Antarctica. Sym wants to call home, but Victor has destroyed the cell phone. To be honest, I don’t quite understand why she stays with him instead of seeking help. I suppose a naive teenager in another country with no one to turn to…maybe staying with Victor was the only option she thought was available to her.

After arriving in Antarctica, Sym starts to see Uncle Victor for what he really is: an obsessed mad man. He secretly starts poisoning all the other people on the tour so he can be left alone with his accomplices to find Symme’s hole. He believes this undiscovered hole leads to a hollow inner world filled with people and animals inside the Earth. Sym is to be sacrificed to the hole to start a new community while Victor goes back to report his findings to the world. Absurd as it is, Uncle Victor has been planning this adventure for some time. In fact, we soon see that it was Uncle Victor who poisoned Sym’s father when he didn’t agree with letting Sym be sacrificed. It was Victor who caused Sym to become deaf by giving her too many antibiotics in preparation for life inside Symme’s hole.

In the end, they reach “Symme’s hole.” Victor is so ecstatic that he climbs into an opening in the ice. Sym tries to convince him it’s a bad idea, but he thinks she is crazy and jumps right in. It is pitch black inside and so deep that Sym doesn’t even hear a thunk when he hits the bottom. She is left alone with her imaginary friend to make it back to civilization. Without Titus to turn to, she never would have made it. He guides her and she eventually finds rescue. After her rescue, we can see that Sym is a whole new person. Mature. Self-reliant. Hopeful. Free from the bonds that held her.