Guided by the fastidious journals of an eminent Victorian adventurer by the name of Lord Dufferin, Tim Moore sets off to prove his mettle in the most stunningly inhospitable place on Earth-the Arctic. Armed only with his searing wit, wicked humor, and seasickness pills, our pale suburbanite-wracked by second thoughts of tactical retreat-confronts mind-numbing cold, blood-thirsty polar bears, a convoy of born-again Vikings, and, perhaps most chilling of all, herring porridge. When he is not humiliating himself through displays of ignorance and incompetence, Moore casts a sharp eye on the local flora and fauna, immersing readers in the splendors and wonders of this treacherously beautiful region. A deliciously and inexhaustibly funny book, Frost on My Moustache deserves to be placed alongside those by Evelyn Waugh, Eric Newby, and Bill Bryson. AUTHORBIO: Tim Moore’s writing has appeared in the Sunday Times, the Independent, the Observer, and the Evening Standard.He lives in West London.In the 1850s, a wealthy British philanthropist by the name of Lord Dufferin sailed his yacht into the Arctic Circle and wrote the bestselling travelogue Letters from High Latitudes. In the 1990s, British writer Tim Moore decided to follow Dufferin’s steps–by boat, plane, and bike. This retracing of Dufferin’s travels across Iceland, into Norway, and to Spitzbergen (prompted when Moore reads the Lord’s 19th-century memoir) is told in a lively, self-deprecating style and starts out brimming with funny anecdotes and interesting tidbits, particularly about Iceland, a report-happy land where the government commissions studies about “the effects of centrifugal force at roundabouts” and where “53 percent of the Icelanders believe in elves.”
While Moore continues to unleash an often funny ramble about his northern excursion, something happens mid-book around the time he learns he’s lost a work-related lawsuit back in England: perhaps Moore’s mind is disintegrating in the polar blasts or he’s lost his will to sustain an audience, but the writer’s style becomes more manic, his recorded observations are frequently peppered with the base and crude, and his obsession changes from the travels of Lord Dufferin to the fate of one of Dufferin’s colleagues, Wilson. The same writing voice that keeps one amused through the first half of the book starts to annoy by the end, as Moore stops providing much relevant info, and instead goes on at great lengths about the price of hot dogs, his nights of drinking and frequent bouts of nausea. Too disgusting in parts to warrant a recommendation to those easily shocked, this jumbled travelogue is nevertheless an often entertaining look into Tim Moore’s personal Arctic madness. –Melissa Rossi
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