Amazon.com Review
The limits of human endurance, man's instinct for survival and dogged perseverance characterize
The Rope Eater, Ben Jones's debut novel. After deserting the Union side in the Civil War, 17-year-old Brendan Kane heads north to New Bedford and signs on with an expedition sailing north to conduct Arctic exploration. A crew of ragtag shipmates is formed. None of them has any survival training, appropriate clothing for the harsh elements, possessions, or close ties--nor do they have a better idea than sailing on the
Narthex for a purpose unknown to them. They are all outsiders, misfits, or men with a need to get out of town, for whatever reasons. One of the crew says, "Two years of work, maybe more, low wages, but a shot at some real money if it goes well." This hope for something that could change their lives keeps them going when the odds against them become overwhelming.
After several weeks at sea, the Captain tells them that they are looking for a "temperate archipelago covered by trees of fantastic colors that grew from the heat of the earth rather than the sun--a lush Garden of Eden in the heart of the Arctic." This is not happy news for men who have been fantasizing legendary gold mines. The voyage continues through the most hostile environment imaginable. The men are always cold, wet, hungry, and at the mercy of the capricious movement of icebergs--it is a bleak, horrific life aboard ship, unrelieved throughout the entire book. Jones's writing is starkly beautiful, filled with authentic details about ships, the Arctic reaches, navigation, ship handling, weather and exposure. There are echoes here of Cold Mountain and The Navigator of New York.
The descent into madness of Dr. Architeuthis, an obsessive taker of measurements; Aziz, the three-handed Muslim boiler-tender who tells Brendan the awful story of rope-eaters; the vagaries of the rest of the crew--these all add color and welcome texture to the gray-white sameness of being surrounded by icebergs. Readers who revel in the hardships and exploits of Ernest Shackleton, William Laird McKinlay, or Robert Falcon Scott will enjoy this story of men against nature in its most relentlessly unforgiving aspects. --Valerie Ryan
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Jones's haunting, gorgeous debut chronicles the travels and travails of Brendan Kane, a young Union Army deserter who joins the crew of the Arctic-bound Narthex. The ship is owned by the enigmatic, pianola-playing Mr. West and directed by Dr. Architeuthis, an eccentric who spends his days performing strange navigational experiments. The rest of the crew is an odd assortment of prisoners, outcasts and cheerful thugs, none of whom know the true purpose of the voyage. Eventually, West and Architeuthis reveal that the ship is bound for a mythical, lush and paradisiacal valley they believe is hidden in the stark expanse of the furthest northern regions. The Narthex makes her way through terrible storms and vast fields of grinding ice before she must be abandoned and the men continue the search on foot and in small boats. Nestled within the story of the quest is the fascinatingly grotesque but lyrical tale of the village where Aziz, the three-handed engine tender, grew up; there, parents committed crimes against their children in the name of opportunity, and "[a]t night the peaks echoed with the screams and cries of children and of mothers and the howling of madmen and the wind." (It is here that mesmerized readers will learn, to their horror, what the term rope eater refers to.) The voyage continues, with the men-enduring all the privations of Shackleton and Scott-reduced to frozen, rotting husks fueled only by courage, will and a brute instinct for self-preservation. Readers may determine that this bleak, harshly beautiful story is almost as exhausting as the Arctic trek itself, but those who persevere will find the journey astonishing.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
