2182 kHz (Hardcover)

by David Masiel (Author) "In ten seasons working the arctic offshore, Henry Seine had never encountered anything quite so disgusting as the shitpile..." (more)
Key Phrases: camp barge, gob rope, float suit, Big Man, Marco Barn, Julia Lew (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In first-time novelist Masiel's gripping, darkly humorous arctic adventure story, Henry Seine is a stubborn seaman plagued by bad luck. In 1989, after his wife sends him a slew of Dear John letters, he takes a job on board a tugboat headed down the Alaska coast. Captained by a madman, the tug goes down, but Seine is miraculously deposited on dry ground after being rescued by the alluring seawoman Julia Lew. Still haunted by the ghosts of the crew and his by now ex-wife, Seine once again chooses the drifting, chaotic life aboard an icebound vessel, persuading his captain and fellow crew members to undertake a bold and dangerous journey to the frigid farthest north in search of stranded scientist Louis Moneymaker. Not surprisingly, this doomed attempt at redemption brings Seine and company once more into precarious circumstances. Masiel's secondary characters possess the same willfulness and sharp sense of humor as Seine himself necessary traits, since they keep the men alive and the reader entertained. There is the Chemist, "a punk rock towboater careening through a mad ocean"; Big Man, a huge Ukrainian; the barbaric Buff, half-Irish, half-Eskimo; and the Wolf, a noseless veteran seaman. Chewing tobacco, swigging Listerine, detailing their bodily functions and generally sparing no one's sentiments, they are a rough and ready lot. Masiel's descriptions of life and work aboard a host of specialized vessels are copiously detailed, and the grim, icy, grease-monkey settings perfectly complement Seine's descent into a physical and emotional abyss. Much grittier and less glamorous than the usual adventure story, Masiel's debut is an arduous but rewarding read. 3-city author tour. (Mar. 19)Forecast: Even Krakauer and Junger fans may find this strong stuff. Masiel's ideal reader is a cross between the gross-out enthusiast and literary buff.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
This first novel introduces the rugged world of (mostly) men who toil on barges, tugboats, and oil rigs in the unforgiving Arctic. Veteran deckhand Henry Seine is working away on ships above the Arctic Circle to pay off an expensive home back in the U.S. when the incipient dissolution of his marriage causes him to reconsider his choice of occupation and pine for a more normal life in a warmer climate. Then, in a freak accident, his tugboat sinks, and Henry is rescued from the freezing waters by a siren of sorts, the intrepid sailor Julia. Smitten by her, Henry sails for home anyway. But he can't resist the call of the wild for long and eventually heads back north to rejoin his old shipmates. One day, while monitoring the emergency frequency 2182 kHz, Seine picks up a distress call from a scientist trapped on a melting ice floe. When the Coast Guard is unable to help, Seine enlists his crew in a makeshift rescue. An excellent adventure tale. Ted Leventhal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Random House; 1st edition (March 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375506063
• ISBN-13: 978-0375506062
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #263,586 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars PRETENTIOUS AND MISGUIDED, May 25, 2003

By	Jon Gallagher (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

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.

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Author Can't Make Up His Mind, May 11, 2002

By	LizN (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

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.

44 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Mayday, Mayday !!!, April 23, 2002

By	James E. Carroll (Cape Cod, Massachusetts, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.