Andrea Barrett's "Ship Fever" won the 1996 National Book Award for Fiction. "The Voyage of the Narwhal" is her sixth novel, and one readers won't want to miss.
"How could I have forgotten what this was like? Thirteen years since I was last on a ship waking to the sounds of halyards cracking against the masts, water rushing past the hull; and each day the sense of time stretching out before me as rich and vast as the ocean. I think about things I've forgotten for years. Outwardly this is much like my last voyages: the watches changing, the ship's bell ringing, the routine of meals and duties. Yet in other ways so different. No miliary men,
no military discipline; just the small group of us, gathered for a common cause. And me with all the time in the world to stand on the deck at night and watch the stars whirling overhead."
Combining fact and fiction, Andrea Barrett focuses on Erasmus Darwin Wells, a scholar-naturalists
accompanying the expedition of the Narwhal. Barrett allows readers to see, through the eyes of Erasmus, the various crew members and the expedition's blustery commander, obsessed with the search for an open polar sea, and to experience the wild beauties of that last unexplored region. The story begins in the spring of 1855 some ten years after the Franklin expedition pushed northward into the wilds of the arctic and vanished a few months later.
"In the mid-nineteenth century; vast sections of the North lie uncharted, and dreams of exploration fuel the imaginations of men bent on making their mark in history." Erasmus Wells and Zeke Vorhees are two such men. Barrett ventures into areas few authors dare to tread as she unfolds an adventurous story both eerie and consuming in nature. Conflict clangs and charges the mind as Erasmus and Zeke seek their individual goals and dreams.
Each chapter brings surprise and information setting a pace so fast your head swims. Just as you think you know a character well, a new and surprising layer of their personality is revealed.
The Narwhal's passage is marked indelibly by encounters with the "uncivilized"
Esquimaux and enticing clues to Franklin's fate. In the back of my mind I kept wondering, would they find remnants of Franklin's crew? Would the Narwhal end up marooned in ice with polar death stalking them?
"The Voyage of the Narwhal" is not the kind of book I usually review, but Barrett has written a story not only for men, but for women. She incorporates the story of the women left behind in Philadelphia who await news of the Narwhal and long for the safe return of their men.
From the sitting rooms of Philadelphia to the expanse of the arctic, from the preparations for the voyage to its terrible aftermath, the narrative's many voices blend and build to a startling crescendo. If I had but one word to describe this novel, I'd select -- exhilarating!
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(Jones is a published writer & literary critic)
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