by Sena Jeter Naslund
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by Nadeem Aslam
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by Sena Jeter Naslund
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by Barbara Kingsolver
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The Surgeon of Crowthorne: A Tale of Murder,Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester |
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Amazon.co.uk Review
It has been said that one can see further only by standing on the shoulders of giants. Ahab's Wife, Sena Naslund's epic work of historical fiction, honours that aphorism, using Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as looking glass into early 19th-century America. Through the eye of an outsider, a woman, she suggests that New England life was broader and richer than Melville's manly world of men, ships and whales. This ambitious novel pays tribute to Melville, creating heroines from his lesser characters, and to America's literary heritage in general. Una, named for the heroine of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, flees to the New England coast from Kentucky to escape her puritanical father and to pursue a more exalted life. She gets whaling out of her system early: going to sea at 16 disguised as a boy, Una has her ship sunk by her own monstrous whale, and survives a harrowing shipwreck:
I was so horrified by the whale's deliberate charge that I could not move. Then my own name flew up from below like a spear: "Una!" Giles' voice broke my trance, and I scrambled down the rigging. No sooner did my foot touch the deck than there was such a lurch that I fell to my face. I heard and felt the boards break below the waterline, the copper sheathing nothing but decorative foil. The whole ship shuddered. A death throe.The ship dies, but Una returns to land to pursue the life of the mind. The novel's opening line--"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last"--also diminishes Melville's hero in the broader scheme of things. Naslund exposes the reader to the unsung, real-life heroes of Melville's world, including Margaret Fuller and her Boston salon, and Nantucket astronomer Maria Mitchell. There is a chance meeting with a veiled Nathaniel Hawthorne in the woods, and throughout the novel the story brims with references to the giants of literature: Shakespeare, Goethe, Coleridge, Keats, and Wordsworth. Although her novel runs long at nearly 700 pages, Naslund has created an imaginative, entertaining, and very impressive work. --Ted Leventhal --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From the Publisher
An epic novel of the sea
Inspired by a brief passage in Melville's Moby Dick, Sena Jeter Naslund has created a vast compelling saga of a woman whose life is dominated by the ocean. As a child, Una Spenser is sent to live with relatives in a lighthouse, but later runs away to sea disguised as a cabin boy. She goes on to encounter disasters, murder, romance, and marriage to Ahab, whom we see through Una's eyes before the white whale takes his leg and he descends into madness.
Inspired by a brief passage in Melville's Moby Dick, Sena Jeter Naslund has created a vast compelling saga of a woman whose life is dominated by the ocean. As a child, Una Spenser is sent to live with relatives in a lighthouse, but later runs away to sea disguised as a cabin boy. She goes on to encounter disasters, murder, romance, and marriage to Ahab, whom we see through Una's eyes before the white whale takes his leg and he descends into madness.
'Unforgettable. An ambitous and splendid accomplishment.' Gregory Peck
'Her story reads as if one of the Bronte sisters had gone off whaling ... the book possesses the reader like an unholy fever.' Time Magazine
'One of the best contemporary novels I've read in years.' Louise Erdrich --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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