The Solitude of Thomas Cave: A Novel [Hardcover]

Georgina Harding (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 20, 2007

In 1616, as the last warm days dwindle in the north Atlantic, the men on an English whaling ship prepare to head back toward home. But there is one exception among them: the quiet, headstrong Thomas Cave. For Cave has bet the rest of the crew that he can spend a winter on this Arctic island. Alone.
 
His shipmates sail away, the days shorten, and the cold weather moves in. Thomas Cave faces months of darkness, ice, and blizzards. He has nothing to his name except his rations, shelter, and a journal--a record in case he doesn't survive to tell his story. But nothing so threatens the willful sailor as his own mind: he is haunted by the remembrances of another life and a lost love. From his post at the edge of the known world, Cave sees his own past, and begins to reflect on man's relationship with God and the wilderness.
 
A beautiful, ghostly tale, The Solitude of Thomas Cave brings us back to the beginning of the modern world, in a story infused with the violence, power and beauty that define both man and nature.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. British travel writer Harding (Tranquebar: A Season in South India) makes her fiction debut with this slim, shimmering historical. In 1616, the whaler Heartsease sets out from England, bound for the Greenland coast. During the voyage, the experienced, much-respected Thomas Cave strikes up a friendship with young Thomas Goodlard, the crew's least-experienced member, who is another Suffolk native. As winter approaches, the crew, having loaded up on whale oil and other tradestuffs, prepares to leave, but a friendly disagreement among them—about whether a human being had ever wintered on the Svalbard coast—darkens and escalates. In a charged moment, Thomas Cave bets £100 that he can survive the winter alone on an uninhabited island. They leave him, with plenty of provisions, to return the following spring. This cold-weather Robinson Crusoe tale (minus Friday) unfolds with spare grace, along with Thomas Cave's past, which includes a lost wife and lost son. In a free and direct style that touches on period dialect but is never heavy-handed (and that is bookended by two first-person remembrances from Thomas Goodlard dated 1640), Harding probes Cave's solitude and his responses to a landscape that, in a heartbeat, can be unrelentingly bleak or dazzling. It's a simple story of spiritual purification, and it is handled beautifully throughout. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Readers who grew up enjoying Gary Paulsen and Will Hobbs will appreciate this compelling survival story. Thomas Cave, a 17th-century English whaler, accepts a dare from his shipmates to spend the winter alone in Greenland. The novel is divided into three parts, beginning with a first-person narrative by Tom Goodlard, a teenager and Cave's only friend on the whaling ship Heartsease. An omniscient narrator takes over in part two, combining a suspenseful story of physical survival with flashbacks to Cave's family life in Copenhagen. While he struggles to endure the cold, dark days and record the practicalities of his survival in a journal, Cave is haunted by memories and mirages of his wife and her ill-fated pregnancy. He finally realizes he must face his grief before he can overcome his despair. Goodlard narrates the final portion of the book, relating the Heartsease's return to Greenland and reunion with Thomas Cave. The Arctic setting is integral to the story, and Harding's clear and evocative prose allows readers to see the beauty of a stark winter there, yet feel the pain of an isolated existence in frigid conditions. This first novel will spark discussion along several themes: the relationship between humans and the natural world, human reactions to tragedy and loss, and the nature of personal relationships. Although Cave survives the physical trial, this is not a "happily ever after" book, and the ending is thought-provoking and realistic.—Sondra VanderPloeg, Tracy Memorial Library, New London, NH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA; First Edition edition (February 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596912723
• ISBN-13: 978-1596912724
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,574,652 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Simple Theme and Storyline, Intricately Woven Subthemes, June 8, 2007

By 

C. Kan (Syosset, New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Solitude of Thomas Cave: A Novel (Hardcover)

Although it may seem a bit Robinson Crusoe-ish, this novel is one of the more intelligent and thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. It seemed to especially hit home for me as an occasional solo-traveler. At the heart of the story is a whaler named Thomas Cave who wagers on being able to survive a winter on Svalbard island and that his colleagues on the Heartsease will honor his wager and return to find him in a year.
Beneath the numbing and bleak story of Cave's survival lie various themes that I think the author wants the reader to consider.
- what do we make of personal relationships?
- how do we deal with memories, especially painful ones?
- do we suspect and isolate people because of our perceived fears of them, or rather internal fears that are merely the works of our mind?
- how do we deal with the environment around us? does it necessarily take an experience like Cave's to help us realize the environmental damage of some of our routine actions?

I feel that I've been better able to appreciate this story upon completing it. It seems to me that one can only truly appreciate and understand the value of Harding's work after reading all 237 pages of the book.

Definitely a worthwhile read.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a novel of grandeur and profound sorrow, April 17, 2007

By 

Laura Blackledge-Cohen (Missoula, Montana) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Solitude of Thomas Cave: A Novel (Hardcover)

Be forewarned! This is not "a bewitching ghost story" (the blurb on the back cover.) There is nothing light or inconsequential about this novel; it is difficult and at times brutal and painful, full of grandeur and profound sorrow. But then, you can't speak truthfully about human nature and human history without these qualities.

This book is an intense experience which also illuminates a brief but important period in history: whaling was perhaps the first episode in modern expoitation of the natural world and a paradigm of what was to come.

Ms. Harding's imagination of the central character is commanding and even awe-inspiring, as is her writing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Solitude of Thomas Cave, January 1, 2008

By 

Chattan Gordon - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Solitude of Thomas Cave (Paperback)

The Solitude of Thomas Cave is non-fiction author, Georgina Harding's first foray into fiction. It is set in the summer of 1616, on a whaling ship off the Island of Svalbard in the North Atlantic. The crew argues whether a man could survive the winter alone in the arctic wilderness. One sailor, Thomas Cave, insists that he could survive. His shipmates promptly bet £100 that he won't. Cave accepts the wager. His shipmates leave Cave on the treeless, uninhabited island, promising to return for him the following year.

Cave initially thrives in his frozen Eden, rising to the challenge of wilderness survival. However, after ingesting toxic polar bear liver, Cave becomes ill and falls into a coma. When he regains consciousness, his pregnant wife is with him. At first, he welcomes the hallucination, chatting amiably with his phantom mate. When she disappears, he longs for her return. With each successive hallucination, Cave becomes more anxious and disturbed. Soon his phantom infant son starts appearing as well, so lifelike Cave can feel the warmth of his body.

The first two-thirds of the novel concern Cave's efforts to survive the arctic winter and the mind-bending loneliness he experiences. This portion of the book is written in the third person, as if the reader is an undetected presence observing all that Cave goes through. Enough of Cave's past is revealed to explain why an intelligent, resourceful man such as Cave might agree to such a foolhardy wager. This portion of the book is written very beautifully and convincingly. If I were to rate the book based upon this first section alone, it would merit an unqualified five stars.

There is a sharp break in the story two-thirds of the way through. The final third of the novel concerns the aftermath of the wager. This portion is told in the form of a narrative written by one of Cave's shipmates twenty-four years later in 1640. The shipmate is struggling to understand the incident and the changes it wrought in Cave's personality. The writing in this portion of the novel is uneven and is somewhat of a letdown after the fine writing and dramatic storytelling in the first section of the novel.

The language and manner of speaking employed in the first portion of the novel are roughly in keeping with 17th Century England. Surprisingly, the shipmate's narrative in the second portion is written in a more contemporary style. For example, the shipmate uses an anthropological term that wasn't coined until the late 19th Century. Still, I am favorably impressed with this fascinating debut novel. This psychological study of loneliness, human need and mankind's relationship with nature is quite compelling. I look forward to more fiction by this author.