Customer Reviews

The Voyage of the Narwhal

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(16)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This is about human endeavour and evil, initially set in the hostilities of the Arctic. The first 2/3 of the book is brilliantly written and researched. The semi-historic descriptions of an ill-fated exploration into the depths of the Arctic is fast-paced. Ms Barrett writes clearly and beautifully. I could envision life in that hostile locale, during all seasons; and almost wanted to be there, too. Normally, I am not a reader of such historic novels. She created excellent suspense, too. The last 1/3 revealed the author's weakness. Despite her extensive research into Esquimaux culture, the story plods to an end. I feel that this is due to her inability to develop characters convincingly. She describes events, geography, climate and "history" wonderfully. Much less convincing are the people central to the story. Most are either weak and without usual human passions, or purely evil. She had difficulty concluding the story that became somewhat ponderous, considering the writing skills well demonstrated at the beginning. Humans and their behavior are not her descriptive strength. I really recommend the book. It was a different reading experience for me. I re-read many paragraphs just to let the prose sink in. She understands and describes great beauty in it's many forms. Her knowledge of evil, fundamental to the story, is more conjectural. Very well done, none-the-less!

If you've never read anything about arctic exploration in the 19th century, this book could be for you. "Voyage of the Narwhal" is a bona fide page turner that demands to be read in as few readings as possible; there never seems to be a convenient place to put the book aside 'until later.' I was always looking forward to the next page.

I knew little and had read even less about this fascinating era of exploration. This book has inspired me to search for more. I disagree with the criticisms of "weak characterizations:" I found the characters very intriguing. I learned to despise Zeke; side with Erasmus; and empathize with Alexa. The subordinate characters came across very well, also.

From a pure entertainment standpoint, I judge the success of a book based on whether or not I could visualize it on the big screen, and, if I could, would I enjoy it. Barrett painted a beautiful film with this book complete with breath-taking action and real live characters that I could see and feel.

Bravo

The Voyage is a 19th century story told with a 20th century sensibility and style. Written a hundred years ago, the hero would have been Voorhees, the explorer stranded in the arctic and returned a public hero. Instead, today's hero is the Naturalist Erasmus who sees Voorhees for a vain and arrogant fool but is uncomfortable in his own skin, who simmers inside about morality buts commits no action until the tide has turned, who resents the falseness of the world but will take no step to remedy it. Ned and Alexandra were the real heros (in either century!) but they are not the center. Written a hundred years ago, the story would have been a rich, swashbuckling yarn, but in today's style, it is lean and understated and ultimately disappointing. I so much wanted to walk away wow! It seems so many writers would rather we admire their artful minimalism than participate as equals in their real feelings!

A fictional ship, The Narwhal, heads up to Greenland and the Canadian Artic to search for the remains of John Franklin and his crew. It is the mid-1800's. The civil war has not yet begun, and no one knows whether there is an open artic ocean. The story is narrated by Mr. Wells, the ship's naturalist and the commander's future brother-in-law. He is a flawed 19th century gentleman who struggles to reclaim his life and to understand what he has experienced.

This book is a page-turner in the best sense of the word. I stayed up late three nights in a row because I wanted to know what happened. More than that, I felt my own life slip away as I joined the crew of the Narwhal, so convincing was Barrett's portrayal. Isn't that why we read fiction? Perhaps one more reason: to see our world differently when we close the covers. This book satisfies that demand as well.

It is nourishing, thought-provoking and beautifully written. One of the best modern American novels in recent years.

This is the only one of Andrea Barrett's books that I've read, but upon finishing it, I'm itching to read more. "The Voyage of the Narwhal" totally enthralled me. It gives an in-depth look at what Arctic exploration was like in the 1850s. Ms. Barrett has clearly done her research; I admit that I'm no historian, but as far as I could tell, all of the background information was accurate (the main characters, of course, being fictional). Tales of the exploration of new and strange landscapes, if done well, will suck you in and make it extremely difficult for you to put the book down. This book fills that description admirably.

However, it's so much more than an adventure novel. In addition to its pure historical accuracy, the book also dwells on the general attitudes of that time period towards science. The main character, Erasmus Darwin Wells, is the naturalist on board the Narwhal, back during the time when every ship had a naturalist to collect and preserve whatever flora and fauna they encountered.

The book takes place not long after Charles Darwin's stint as a naturalist on board the Beagle, during which time he formulated his ideas on evolution and natural selection. It is clear from the discussions that Erasmus has with his colleagues that Darwin's ideas have not been totally accepted, and reading about these varying viewpoints, unsure about the truth of Darwin's theory, fascinated me. The attitudes of the day towards other races of humans were split into factions; some believed that each race is its own separate species (hence the practice of slavery and prejudice was easily justified, as the "lower" races weren't as "highly evolved" as the white race), others believed in the equality of all humankind. These attitudes are revealed in the various crew members when the Narwhal encounters several tribes of Esquimaux on her journey.

All of these factors make for a fantastic book - and I haven't yet said anything about the characters. They are all very real and complex, and the different layers of their personalities are revealed as the Narwhal moves farther into uncharted territory and the niceties of civilization are slowly stripped away. Furthermore, there is just as much development of the women left behind on the mainland, waiting for their men to return to them. Their stories show the frustration and powerlessness that were felt by women in the days when they had little or no control over their lives, and were denied any sort of public recognition for their work.

If all of Barrett's books are as good as this one, I'm in for a treat, because I'm planning on buying some of them as soon as possible!

The Voyage of the Narwhal offers a fascinating "inside-out" look at 19th century explorers and explorations. Andrea Barrett books passage for the reader on the Narwhal, a ship bound for the Arctic in search of a lost explorer and crew. This voyage of rescue and discovery becomes an occasion for the exploration of the hearts and minds of a variety of characters.

The true motivations of the commander of the Narwhal become all too apparant to the crew. The toll taken on their lives in order to satisfy his desire for fame under the guise of rescue and advancement of knowledge is truly heart rending. The complexity of reasons and motivations for the actions of the characters both on the search and those waiting at home illustrates the spectrum of shallowness and depth of human beings. The heart is truly deceitful, who can know it?

The novel continues to develop this theme upon the return home of the survivors. The public, hungry for excitment and news of the voyage, lacks discrimination and makes a hero and a goat of the two main characters. Truth is not what the public wants and adventure is the news of the moment. This climate is not conducive to thoughtful evaluation of the purpose and consequences of exploration and serves to fuel wonderlust and the opportunists who can exploit the moment for their own benefit. The novel raises the question of what is truly gained and lost in efforts of scientific inquiry.

The book can be seen as a revealing critique of the human cost of the advancement of knowledge by the unscrupulous as well as its impact on the people and culture of those being "studied." Much of what is justified on the altar of science, a worthy endeavor when approached with the right motives and principles, is shown to be less than worthy of the human race.

Rich, multi-layered and gloriously textured, I found the book completely absorbing. Not for literary lightweights as the complexity of characters and the depth of scientific theory is challenging. I was particularly impressed by the author's insight into the mysticism of the Inuit people. She is at her best when looking out at the world from behind Annie's eyes. Also, a most interesting commentary on bigotry in this era of politically covert bigotry.

What do you say about a book this good? Perhaps it's enough to say it can make you want to start reading again. At the end of the twentieth century, it may seem impossible for any writer to return us to the state of mind in which we read as teenagers while still giving us a literary experience that is altogether adult. Or impossible for a work of fiction to be worthy of the glowing reviews that now are thrown, as if in desperation, against any product of the imagination somewhat outranking "The Phantom Menace" in taste and style. Perhaps it will do to say that "The Voyage of the Narwhal" is better than any movie and will probably defeat any effort to film it, uncannily visual though it is. Its reality is not virtual: it does not imitate the truth; it merely provides it, giving us imperfect and believable human characters and dispatching them to their fates in ways which compel us to think deeply about the human need for stories and the lengths to which we will go to furnish ourselves an acceptable life-narrative. While this book will not be to everyone's taste--some will find it anachronistic in its feminist touches and other products of a twentieth-century consciousness; others will be impatient with its earnest, anti-postmodern narrative--those who are gripped by it will not be cheated. It is emotional, but never manipulative; its morality is clear but subtle, with Erasmus Wells never a pure hero or victim, Zeke's evil a product of socially sanctioned immaturity rather than malevolence (like many dictators, he is good with children and animals), and the women and native peoples neither marginalized nor improbably noble. The novel's literary excellence shows a similar sense of balance. The unevenness of "Ship Fever" is replaced by a near-perfect tension between introspection and a narrative that gets on with it; within the boundaries set by this tension, characterization is limited but rich; the prose is gorgeous but tightly controlled. Again, it's not a book for everyone but those who read it will not come out the same. Perhaps the most wonderful gift of all is the promise that Barrett has many more books to write and can only get better and better. BRAVA!!!!!!!

The Voyage of the Narwhal is a vicarious journey to the Artic of the 1800's, a time when that area was largely unknown and a source of immense mystery and legend. Numerous adventurers from both Britain and America made voyages to chart the area and to learn about the indigenous peoples, the climate, and the flora and fauna. This voyage is fiction but written in such a way that we are transported back to the nineteenth century as we view and come to understand the workings of scientific explorations of the times as well as the universal chemistry that occurs among men and women in situations that require strength of character and courage. The main character and narrator, Erasmus Darwin Wells, is a natural scientist and man of moral integrity,and his struggle to maintain that integrity in a world of frozen landscape and dream is a feat almost beyond belief in the modern world. That he survives at all, both physically and spiritually, is close to a miracle. The efforts he later puts forth to save the dignity of the Eskimos is not only admirable but self-sacrificing and courageous. While the men venture forth to encounter the unknown, the women stay at home to wait and experience their exploits in dreams and daily despair. We find women of strenth and character who continue to hope for their men's return, but the most endearing of them is one who longs to join the hunt--to experience first hand the thrill of discovery. This is a book that explores not only the unknown frozen Arctic, but also the terrain of the human spirit as it tries to adjust to extreme adversity in the physical and the moral realms. It is certainly worth reading both for its power as an adventure story and its exploration of the human psyche.

Andrea Barrett does a fine job of capturing the gradual dissolution of a polar expedition. Erasmus Wells, a naturalist, whose first opportunity at scientific glory was destroyed by a jealous captain, decides to accompany his wife's fiance, Zeke, on an expedition to locate a missing ship and rescue its crew. The trip begins well, but the egocentric Zeke leads the crew from one mishap to the next, all in support of his ego. Barrett does a great job of capturing the characters gradual shift from their original personas to the men they become when faced with the North's bitter and unforgiving conditions. The tale does have a feeling of truth about it; Barrett seems to have captured the public's fascination with exploration and how quickly public opinion can shift based on perceptions. It is only at the end, where Barrett allows the story to become a melodrama, that the novel fails in any way. Despite the flawed ending the novel does an excellent job of examining the time where the North was still an unknown quality, and men measured themselves against the natural world.