Customer Reviews

2182 kHz

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This novel is part adventure, part romance, part comedy. It never quite rises to the level of good enough in any of those categories. It's not a complete ship-wreck, but no one seems to have been steering this tanker.

When an author cannot decide whether the theme of his novel is man's struggle against the harshest of nature's elements or man's struggle with his inner demons, then the reader will thrash around trying to decide what struggle to focus on. While the novel's title refers to the broadcast channel of the marine international distress signal, it really is just a metaphor for the protagonist's life which is in distress. Framed against the backdrop of life on Artic Sea tugboats, the reader is exposed to a life only a handful of humans would ever experience or want to experience for that matter. With all due respect to the men and women who toil on the high seas for their daily bread, this book is better skipped.

Proving that working on a tugboat exposes one to a technology, lifestyle and terminology that is foreign to even the most sea-faring audience, the author loses his readers from the opening chapter. Descriptive writing shouldn't be confused with detailed writing; here all we have are endless details that contribute nothing to moving the story along; there are so many details that I almost gave up on this book after the first few chapters. Looking to pass the time on a two hour flight with this relatively short novel, I was sorely disappointed.

Not everything in this book is disappointing; the characters are intriguing and I would have liked more of a story where these characters who spend months on end at sea were developed. The author's eye for detail should be directed toward the detail necessary for character development. I had to remind myself that this was a novel, not a nonfiction selection about tugboats.

Hmm. It's hard to know what to think of this after the first two chapters. Quickly afterwards, it becomes clear that this is going nowhere and aggregating into nothing. Yes, there are characters, and yes, they "do things," but somehow none of it ever adds up. It's as though the author took all of the elements that go into a story, exaggerated them tremendously, and then settled them onto the page without any thought as to how they related to one another.

Thus, we have a hero, we have the backdrop of Alaska, we have a series of actions in an overdescribed melieu. Detail upon detail upon detail is ladled out, and it never takes us anywhere. This problem sinks down into the sentence level as well. Words are thrown together one after another awkwardly, as though the writer is reaching for a word--any word at all--and then committing to it without thought. Three quarters of the adjectives could have been cut from this to better effect. The ultimate result is like the feeling of a junkyard full of discarded industrial parts, through which we are led without much plan or purpose.

It's hard to find a genre for the resultant book. It is not an adventure story, because there is no sustained tension. It is not a love story, because the women exist more as abstract constructs than as real people. It is not a literary novel, as the highly developed style and imagistic resonance is missing.

The book is perhaps best described as a veil of shadows and fog and ice. It consists of all of the mechanical parts askew on the floor, without anyone bothering to lay them out in a way that makes sense, much less assemble a finished product.

It would be too easy to say that the result is disappointment. It is more accurate to say that I am bewildered.

Couched in a macho rollercoaster ride off the North Face of Alaska, this novel has at its core the exposed and gentle beating heart of a great novelist. David Masiel's first novel, largely autobiographical, tells the story of a desperate man's search for forgiveness and love in the most improbable of places: the harsh and life-endangering ice floes of the Beaufort Sea. Henry Siene (pronounced Sane) has sentenced himself, like the other often amazingly rich and damaged characters up there, to doing hard time in one of the most punishing and highest mortality jobs on earth - working the offshore oil rigs and ocean-going tugs of the arctic circle. He can't forgive himself, and so he cannot connect emotionally with others, except the equally macho strutting characters of the North. When an improbable affair reawakens his confused heart, he begins a search for redemption - and finds it in a desperate rescue mission of what he believe to be a trapped scientist, who's faint voice he hears fading in and out over 2182 kHz - the international distress frequency - and who may or may not be out there in the breaking floes. Melville has nothing on David Masiel. A great summer read, and an unforgettable and moving story.

At first I suspected that I would not like a book like this. It seemed totally male. But a woman whose opinions I respect liked the book and recommended it. So we chose it for our couples book club (which made the men happy!) It started out kind of raunchy for me (this guy definitely has got a sick sense of humor), but when the main character goes out to sea and is nearly lost, then meets the character of Julia, the story turns sensual and becomes very moving. There's a romantic quality in their relationship that comes through after all the perverseness and gallows humor of their lives. The ending was intense and suspenseful, and my eyes couldn't read fast enough. I would recommend this book to anybody who wants to go on an adventure into truly one of the wildest places on our earth. After I finished the book, I was homesick for these characters whom I had grown to understand and appreciate. I find myself wishing I could revisit them in their crazy, surreal world.

I loved this book. The characters are unsavory yet adhere to a code of morals that includes sacrificing one's life to seek a lost stranger in the frozen nothingness of an Arctic wasteland. The characterizations are vivid, the raw reality of surviving in a frigid Hell that can freeze your tears and blacken your nose with frostbite made painfully clear. But above all, David Masiel imparts the poignant tragedy of being drawn to a way of life that can kill you, drain away all your passion, and leave you dying in a state of snowblindness that has a harrowing beauty to it. It reminded me of seamen so absorbed in the harsh conditions of a snow-smothered life they find it impossible to return to land.
The romance at the heart of the story is unconventional and enormously appealing. The protagonist, Henry Seine, is a man teetering on the edge of his own self-loathing. He seems to have a Midas touch of death, inadvertantly killing those close to him. The novel is always compelling, with fascinating details about rogue waves, icesteroids, and tabular iceburgs. The action is memorable and easy to understand. One chapter involving the sinking of a ship is a tour-de-force, both spectacular in its description and stunning in its ability to convey the sensations and emotions of characters trapped in the grips of sheer terror and helplessness. I was awed by the author's mastery of the language, making me appreciate the dizzy horror of being tossed about by waves until your brain confuses "up" and "down". The dialogue is often hilarious, providing a counterpoint to the drama.
The ending is unexpected and excellent. Every frantic groping for survival is earned through perseverence and staggering through the white haze of creeping pack ice. Noble efforts backfire and prove that fighting for humanity doesn't come without casualties. And overshadowing it all, the brutal allure of searching for one's worth in a trek to the frozen reaches of the Poles, drawn into an icy whirlpool of chaos, finding redemption filtering through the static of a short-wave radio...
P.S. And for the smug, self-righteously witty reviewer who is so enamored by his own vicious review (that borders on hatred), this author is also an English professor. Find out the facts before you attack someone's credentials--otherwise you undermine yourself. And have a nice day.

It's hard to express how much I enjoyed this novel, or exactly why. I found it different than anything else I've ever read. The story is engaging; the characters are engaging; the imagery astounding. Somehow it came together and transported me into its world in a way that few books have.

I was sucked into this story the minute I began reading its New York Times book review. I never would have picked it up off the shelf without some promting because it looks like it's just a boy's book about ships and storms. I loved this novel though! Masiel gets your attention from the first scene. "Oh geezzz! How can he start with THAT!" I laughed out loud. He pulled me into environmental, social, and sexual issues when I wasn't looking and gave me plenty to ponder long after I sailed through the book.

The story only has two women in it, and only one named Juila that you actually get to know. She's a woman's woman, though, who rescues the main character from his sinking ship and seems to be the real balast in an otherwise trubulent sea of men. She's the exact mixture of dedicated, self reliant, and sexually secure that makes you proud to be a woman. You know Masiel loves and appreciates real women as well as real men by the way he renders their actions and reactions. He seeps into the complexity of their thinking until he brings you to some real insight at the end of the book.

Masiel pours unexpected images over each page, keeping you surprised as well as suspended out in the middle of nowhere with him. When you close the book, you'll just smile. Don't let the cover throw you off. A ship in a storm is not the point of the story, but more of a way to talk about some universal truths that are usually hidden at the bottom of the sea.

This is one wild ride of a book.It started out brash and vulgar
and foreign and rarely let up. Appallingly harsh and beautiful,
like a maelstrom, I did get sucked in, utterly. Even the characters that I did not like, was not supposed to like, I
would gladly hoist a beer with. As I approached the end, I found
myself doing any thing that I could to forestall the inevitable,
you know, put it down and make a phone call...turn on the TV,
take out the trash,u.s.w....until I could not wait any more and
had to pick it up again. I am purposefully not describing in
detail anything or anyone to avoid tainting anyone's perception.
This is a book that one should enter cold, without any signposts
or charts.Just read it.

I really enjoyed this book. It had a little bit of everything, seafaring adventure, twisted minds, suspense and passion. The characters are well developed and the story moves at a good pace. The last few chapters were impossible to put down.

I highly recommend this if you liked "Into Thin Air" or "The Perfect Storm".