Once again I’m wishing I could read every book I’m offered or that drops into my post box as I love the sound of this latest one from John Ironmonger. I think once you’ve seen what John told me when we stayed in together, you’ll realise why!
Let’s find out more:
Staying in with John Ironmonger
Welcome to Linda’s Book Bag John. Thank you so much for agreeing to stay in with me.
Thank you so much for having me. And congratulations on a remarkable book blog. I’m a big fan.
That’s very kind of you. Tell me, which of your books have you brought along to share this evening and why have you chosen it?
So I’ve brought The Wager and the Bear. It’s my new novel.
That’s a fabulous cover! What can we expect from an evening in with The Wager and the Bear?
Aha. Apart from a simply gorgeous cover by the amazing Ed Bettison, you should expect some drama, some romance, and a rollicking good yarn. And plenty of jeopardy too.
Sounds brilliant. Tell me more.
Two sworn enemies lost on a frozen ocean, marooned on an iceberg with a hungry polar bear. This isn’t your ordinary boy-meets-girl story. But it is a love story nonetheless, a story of loss, and resilience, and it’s a story I know readers will engage with.
Those sound universal themes. How is The Wager and the Bear being received by early readers?
‘This book is magical and gritty all at once. I love it,’ wrote Radio 4’s Anna Freeman. Essie Fox called it ‘a novel full of warmth, wit, and wisdom,’ and novelist Stephen May wrote, ‘The Wager and the Bear is a joy to read.’
You must be delighted by those comments! I understand it is a book that delves into the climate crisis. Can you tell us more about that?
Yes of course. This is a story that centres on a dangerous wager about our changing climate. Once you’ve read it, you may never look at the world in the same way again. That’s the pact you make with this book. It is the story of an eager young activist, Thomas Horsmith, and it takes us from a dangerous confrontation in a Cornish inn on the night of his twentieth birthday to a deadly outcome fifty years later.
The Wager and the Bear sounds both important and unsettling John.
It may shake your confidence in humanity’s willingness to fix our planet. I hope it does. It may make you anxious about the future we are building for our grandchildren. I hope it does this too. Shelley Harris, author of ‘Jubilee’ wrote, I was completely invested and utterly gripped. This is what good storytellers do in the face of the climate crisis: choreograph a dance between the vast and the tiny, between the global and the human.’
To be honest John, I think we may have left it too late to fix the planet!
The book is primarily set in Cornwall. Is this somewhere that is special for you?
My mother was a Cornish girl. She grew up in Mevagissey which is an ancient fishing port on the Atlantic coast. I grew up in Nairobi, but when I was a teenager, my parents moved back to Mevagissey to run the village shop and I had to reconcile my truculent teenage attitudes and my love of big cities and bright lights with this sleepy, strange seaside community. I hated it. And then suddenly I loved it. I wrote about it (or a village like it) in my novel Not Forgetting the Whale which became an international bestseller. It seemed like a good place to go back to for Thomas and his nemesis Monty. So, yes. Cornwall is always a special place for me. I close my eyes and I’m back there.
It’s such a beautiful part of the world.
What else have you brought along and why have you brought it?
I’ve brought along a snowman but I’m already beginning to wonder if this might have been a bad choice. Oh dear!
He does seem a little bit ‘damp’!
I can only apologise. He does seem to be dripping all over your carpet. I didn’t expect him to melt so fast. There is quite a lot of snow and ice in The Wager and the Bear so I thought if I brought Otto along it might be a light-hearted way to illustrate the rather obvious truth that snow and ice do melt rather quickly when it gets warm. I was hoping to use it to introduce the point that three quarters of a billion tonnes of ice melts from our planetary ice caps every single minute – equivalent to filling up Windermere three times a day. It was a silly idea and I’m so sorry.
I think you have made your point only too well!
Oops! There goes the carrot. I don’t suppose you have a mop.
Never mind John. Shall we just take what’s left of him outside?
Excellent idea. And this could remind us that once the ice is gone, it’s gone. At least for a few million years.
Thank you John. That’s actually a really important point. Although next time you drop by, might I suggest that you bring a snow-globe? Thanks so much for staying in with me to chat all about The Wager and the Bear. I think it sounds wonderful.
Thank you Linda. Oh, and can I mention that The Wager and the Bear is out in paperback on 21st February?
You can indeed! In fact, I’ll just give Linda’s Book Bag readers a few more details:
The Wager and the Bear
When young idealist Tom publicly humiliates politician Monty in a Cornish pub, it sparks a simmering feud that cascades through their intertwined lives. The consequences of their argument, and the deadly wager they strike, will cascade down the decades. Years later, they find themselves a long way from St Piran onto a colossal iceberg drifting south away from Greenland, their only companion a starving polar bear.
A heart-stopping tale of anger, tragedy, and enduring love, cast against the long unfolding backdrop of climate catastrophe.
Published by Fly on the Wall on 21st February 2025, The Wager and the Bear is available for purchase here.
About John Ironmonger
John Ironmonger is a British novelist born in 1954, in Nairobi, Kenya. He studied Zoology at the University of Nottingham and later completed a PhD in environmental science at the University of Liverpool. Before becoming a full-time writer, he worked in healthcare computing and lectured at the University of Ilorin in Nigeria.
John’s debut novel, The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award in 2012. His other notable works include The Coincidence Authority and Not Forgetting the Whale (also known as The Whale at the End of the World), which became an international bestseller. His novels have been translated into multiple languages.
For further information, visit John’s website and follow him on Twitter/X @jwironmonger, or find John on Bluesky and Instagram.
