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Close Quarters
 
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Close Quarters (Hardcover)

by William Golding (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 282 pages
  • Publisher: Faber & Faber (5 April 1988)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0571151671
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571151677
  • Product Dimensions: 18.4 x 12 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,458,810 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #71 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Golding, William

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Product Description

Product Description

A sequel to RITES OF PASSAGE, set on board a ship on its way to Australia. A ball is held on the ship whilst it is becalmed in a wilderness of heat and sea mists, and under the influence of this strange atmosphere, soon the passengers and the very ship itself start to go to pieces.

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Close Quarters
57% buy the item featured on this page:
Close Quarters 4.0 out of 5 stars (1)
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Taken Aback, 25 May 2009
By Melmoth (London, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Close Quarters (Sea Trilogy) (Paperback)
The second book in Golding's Sea Trilogy, Close Quarters continues the story of young Edmund Talbot's journey to Australia, begun in Rites of Passage. Having witnessed peril, conspiracy and death in Rites of Passage, Edmund is not quite the cocksure, pompous and priggish creature he was at the beginning of his journey ... though many of the character traits that have led his fellow passengers to nickname him "Lord Talbot" remain.


After the darkness of the trilogy's first novel, much of the tone of Close Quarters comes as a relief, with Golding setting up all the ingredients for a swashbuckling sea story ... before carefully knocking down each in turn. There is romance, there is the peril of the French, there is the threat of a duel. All these things seem, are, very real ... yet for all the vividness of their initial apprehension, each fades away in the clear light of day. At the same time, much that is enduring becomes fantastical, with Edmund suffering the effects of a series of blows to his head (occasioned by bravery and blundering in equal measure) and of the paregoric (largely consisting of opium) administered to deal with them. Underneath all this lies the ship itself, wounded and groaning, providing a sinister drone underlying the apparent lightness of the melody.


Golding's obviously extensive research is used with great skill, both in depicting the running of the ship and the relations of those aboard it. Issues of privilege, class, hope and expectation are played out amid complex rigging and atop bucking boards. But perhaps Golding's greatest achievement in the novel is the voice of Edmund himself. In recording his journal, Edmund unwittingly reveals himself, in a way recognisable to anyone who has ever uncovered their teenage diary. Our "hero" is absolutely authentic - very young, very foolish but - for much of the novel - unable to see himself as such. He believes himself cool, dispassionate and a natural commander of men but at the same time he resents the gruff Captain Anderson, boyishly admires the stalwart Lieutenant Summers and falls gushingly in love with the beautiful Miss Chumley. He is ill-at-ease with his fellow passengers and fearful of the lower orders, emigrants and sailors alike, that lurk about the ship and below its decks. A wonderfully unreliable narrator, his journal is filled with mistakes and misapprehensions as clear to the reader as they are opaque to himself.
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