Customer Reviews

The Rope Eater

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Part way through the book I looked up "narthex." It's an antechamber of a church in which penitents wait. That, plus the opening with the heart beating strongly, the quest for an "Eden," the silver "chalice," which the narrator finds in Asiz's frozen hands, the strange story of the rope eater, the birth canal experience in which the narrator slithers through the glacier, looking for a way out to paradise only to return to hell make me think there's more to this story than I have quite figured out to my satisfaction. That's one of the reasons I like it so much. The details ring true without self-conscious display of scholarship. The narrator remains enigmatic, and I am hoping someone has some insights into allegorical interpretations.

While home for the holidays I picked up The Rope Eater after reading a review of it in the Denver Post. Jones's use of language creates a richly mezmerizing and haunting world that envelopes the reader completely. I haven't enjoyed a book this much since Cold Mountain. And like the main character's unrelenting heart, which drives him out into the world, the reader is driven out on a journey that is as much a spiritual and philosophical thriller as it is a seafaring adventure. The passages describing the tribe of rope eaters are terrifying and breathtaking and the resolution left me profoundly moved. This is an unforgettable book.

Excellent book. I read a review in the Washington Post, having never heard of the novel before, and bought it on a whim. It was completely worth it. Some other books I read over Christmas break were The Bridge at San Luis Rey, The Hunters, and The Satanic Verses, and the The Rope Eater was by far the one I most enjoyed. This is an excellent novel with (as every review points out) echoes of Conrad and Melville, and I know that I'll be reading it again in the next few months.

"The Rope Eater" is peopled with interesting fully realized characters in extraordinary circumstances. Author Ben Jones creates a colorful crew of misfits and eccentrics leaving a Civil War torn United States on a mysterious arctic adventure.
Speaking as one who has studied 19th century America and expeditions of this sort, Jones deserves full credit for a thorough research job. The journey itself, the perils and deprivations make for compelling reading. Putting disparate figures into dangerous and unfamiliar situations is a recipe for good fiction and Jones does not disappoint. Jones does a wonderful job of following the manner in which people respond in such conditions. The added element of the mysterious nature of the journey is adroitly handled.
However the lone character who I found lacking was the main one, Brendan Kane. He particularly perplexed me early in the novel as he left home, then a job to enlist, and finally when he deserted. Jones seemed to rush through the opening passages when he would have been better served developing the character. I similarly found the end of the book rushed. That aside, "The Rope Eater" is an excellent compliment to non-fiction works such as "Barrow's Boys" that delve into the harrows of 19th century arctic explorations, those both scientific and fanciful.
Jones' debut is a smashing one and I eagerly await his future work.

I saw this reviewed in the New York Times Book Review on Jan. 11th and decided to read it. It's a deep and brilliant novel that gives a vivid account of the challenges of artic exploration as well as a thoughtful analysis of the good and the evil that exists in the world.

It's a wonderful read and you will come back to it again and again.

I was in Chapter 11, the bookstore chain not the legal state, when a salesperson said that this would soon be the new hot book. Her book club was reading it and she said she was only 120 pages into it, but that I should buy it. I had been well steered by her in the past. What a find. This is a thriller more than a historical novel. I read it in one weekend. That is rare for me.

Damn fun reading.

This is a first person account of a trip to the arctic in the 1860's narrated by a Civil War deserter. Within the first few pages, our hero enlists, pilfers letters off battlefield corpses, deserts, is injured in NYC draft riots, ends up in New Bedford, MA and signs up on a sailing ship without ryhme or reason or knowing where it was going. The book was downhill from there.

Page after page described ice and the crew's interminable struggles to get through. Getting through the book was nearly as interminable.

The reader never gets to know the narrator enough to empathize with him, or really understand him at all. Thus, his struggles ring hollow and he evokes no sympathy during his struggles.

There are elements of fantasy in the book. Not enough to make it a fantasy, but enough to steer a reader off course. The scientist on the mission is after a warm Garden of Eden in the middle of the Arctic. He is mad or it's fantasy, it is hard to know until the end. There is a fantasy interlude when a character who has three hands (the most likeable character in the book) describes how he got his third hand. From that yarn comes the title "Rope Eater". The title really has nothing to do with the book, other than rope eaters and the crew members suffered pain.

Besides the tedious turning of the plot, the characters lack any development. Only the three handed man and the captain, both tangential characters, had any depth whatsoever.

This book seemed to be an attempt at adventure, but not enough happened between the interminable accounts of ice to build much tension. It never developed the aspect of the deterioration of the characters - mentally and physically - it just happened. Although the reader knew the characters must be suffering, it never came through the over-writing.

As one might expect, the crew's mission to find the warm Garden of Eden in the arctic was pointless. So was this book. It was a disappointment.

I came upon The Rope Eater by accident, browsing New Releases in our local library. I think I picked it up mainly because the title compelled me. I don't usually read historical fiction. This novel is utterly riveting -- it's all Story -- no disguised author's editorial commentary to impress readers. The Rope Eater is rich in detail and metaphor. The writing is vivid and focused. I've read it twice and will do so again. The writing is that "present." When I began reading the book, I couldn't wait to sink back into it at the next opportunity. In the right hands, this could make an astonishing, emblematic movie. But it already is, fully, a great story. Congratulations to author Ben Jones. And thank you.

A brave excursion, a cautionary tale

In the mid-1860's, young Brendan Kane finds the prospect of soldiering in the Civil War more appealing than life in his staid New England home. An only child seduced by war's false glamour, Brendan is quickly awakened to reality, revolted by the human carnage around him. Deserting one dark night, Kane flees to New York, where he blends into the roving mob of the Draft Riots, carried along by random violence.

Coming to his senses and unharmed, Brendan joins an Arctic voyage of indeterminate length on the Narthex, a reprobate whaler currently loading crew and provisions in port; signing on for the voyage is the most fateful decision of Kane's young life. His fellow crewmembers are an odd an assortment, men without place or means, who seize on the opportunity for adventure and the luxury of three meals a day. The men are unsure of the goal of their journey, patiently enduring until the owner of the expedition, Mr. West, confides that they are seeking " a paradise in the heart of the Arctic" where they will make their fortune, a virtual Garden of Eden suggested in the pages of West's family journal.

The oddest member of the group is Dr. Architeuthis, a physician-scientist who believes himself a man of the future, methodically testing the conditions that may affect the direction of the voyage, capturing samples in glass vials. The doctor likes young Kane, frequently using him as his assistant; for his part, Kane is most attracted to the exotic Aziz, a three-handed Arab who keeps below deck, stoking the boiler. Huddled for warmth with Aziz, Kane learns the story of the man's birth and why he has three hands. Aziz describes a barren village twisted by poverty, whose members are given an opportunity to enrich their lives. Of all the tales of the villagers, that of The Rope Eater best describes the astonishing inhumanity to which the village falls prey.

In the spirit of the day, the men endure the unremitting violence of the weather through the light-filled Arctic summer and blackest winter. Held captive by huge blocks of ice, the men become "a population of loss", who "in our lethargy... had only the energy to covet and loathe". The temperature drops to 49 degrees below 0. As nature exacts her deadly toll on the Narthex and her crew, a few, including Kane and the doctor, forge ahead to find their arctic Eden somewhere within the rigid ice floes. Even the doctor's relentless calculations cease to make sense and Kane finds reason to doubt the veracity of their quest, when "believing that this easy complexity can pass for vision" may simply be evidence of man's astonishing hubris.

The extraordinary prose is as unforgiving as the elements. Each brutal step of the journey, each spark of humanity is quickly extinguished by the weather's fury; yet it is in man's nature to challenge such odds. The author's calculated prose is etched with exacting detail and persuasiveness. Joining the Narthex to the tale of The Rope Eater, Jones enters into the territory of myth, in a story both shocking and compelling. Luan Gaines/2004.

Once I found out just what a "rope eater" was I put the book down and disposed of it. Accounts of people mutilating their children was not what I was expecting.