Ahab's Wife

Rating:
Summary: A Magical journey
Review: This is a BIG read-a fairytale for grownups.Adolescent Una is wisely sent to live with her mothers sister,in a lighthouse,to avoid the increasing possibility of abuse by her father,a religious fanatic. She spends four happy years with them before running away to sea,disguised as a boy,with two young men to whom she is equally attracted.This book is the story of her three marriages,the second of which is to Captain Ahab,a whaler and declared mortal enemy of Moby Dick,the great white whale. We follow Una through tragedies,joys,the loss of two husbands and a baby,to where she finally reaches true happiness and fulfillment. The book is peopled with an assortment of fascinating characters,and M/s Naslund paints incredibly beautiful and vivid word pictures of Nantucket and both the beauty and horror of living in a coastal town with all it's connections to the barbarities of the whaling trade.

Rating:
Summary: What a yarn, what a novel! What a writer!
Review: Author Naslund takes up the tale of the young wife Ahab mentions but briefly in Moby Dick. It takes place during and after the loss of the Pequod during its fatal hunt for the great White Whale and is the first-person memoir of Una Spenser.

This book is so literary, so well crafted for its subject that I can't believe it was written in 1999 and not in the late 1800's. Only a few anachronisms betray the modern date for Ahab's Wife. (A mention of kiwi fruit for one, they were not cultivated outside of China nor known as Kiwi until the early 1900's)

Una Spenser (named for Spenser's character in the Faerie Queene) is a courageous yet imaginative heroine. She struggles against God, against slavery, against traditional women's' roles in pre-Civil War America, runs away to sea, and meets Captain Ahab after a harrowing experience aboard ship.

The scope of this book is grand and it is written a bit in style that pays homage to Melville, grasping some of Melville's poetry and symbology of Nature and also the sexual ambiguity. But Naslund also stitches in a bit of Virginia Woolf and To The Lighthouse. Sections of Melville's work are patched in to form a smooth story of Ahab's soul mate, his female side, Una, whom he loved and abandoned for his destiny with Moby Dick.

In fact, this book reminds me of the patchwork quilts mentioned many times in Ahab's Wife. The pieces are stitched together (12 stitches to the inch, Una can sew) in colors that blend to make a pleasing whole. Yet pieces of fabric come from many diverse sources, such as the Melville classic and Woolf as well as others.

This is a brilliant achievement of a novel yet reads like a magnificent yarn. Naslund is not only a master writer but also a master storyteller. I could not put this book down until I finished every last page and I am going to re-read it immediately.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful journey
Review: Yes, this is a long book, but it is a wonderful journey that I did not want to end. I most enjoyed getting to know this character better as each chapter passed. Don't rush through this satisfying tale. It's a true delight.

Rating:
Summary: A Magical Journey
Review: This is a BIG read--a fairytale for grownups.Adolescent Una is wisely sent to live with her mothers sister,in a lighthouse,to avoid the increasing possibility of abuse by her father, a religious fanatic.She spends 4 happy years with them before running away to sea,disguised as a boy with two young men to whom she is equally attracted.This book is the sory of her 3 marriages the second of which is to Captain Ahab,a whaler and declared mortal enemy of Moby Dick,the great white whale.We follow Una through tragedies,joys,the loss of 2 husbands and a baby ,to where she finally reaches true happiness and fulfillment.The book is peopled with an assortment of fascinating characters,and M/s Naslund paints incredibly beautiful and vivid word pictures of Nantucket and both the beauty and horror of living in a coastal town with all its connections with the barbarities of the whaling trade.

Rating:
Summary: I read it TWICE!
Review: This was a wonderful ADVENTURE book for women!

Rating:
Summary: You don't want to read this
Review: This book is perfectly dreadful. I wanted to like it because the author is from my hometown, but it is so, so bad. The worst novel I have read in many years. The protagonist, the story-- completely unbelievable. The author portrays Una as this woman with very modern sensibilities, very p.c. Where did this come from? Despite the fact that she has no formal education, she meets every possible literary and famous personage in the area, and not only that, she wows them with her erudition. The name dropping in this novel is outrageous because it serves no purpose in the story. Oh, who have we here, why it's Frederick Douglass why don't you go stand over there by Emerson and Whitman. Ridiculous.
I agreed with a reviewer earlier who said this book was like Everybody loves Una, because no matter what she does, everybody likes her, understands her, there is never any reproach and she is considered brilliant and compassionate. She doesn't learn from anything that happens to her, because she is already so accomplished and right-thinking.
The love story passages are very-romance novelish.
The author throws in details to make the story even more dramatic which ultimately serve no purpose whatsoever and, like I said, strain the believableness of the story too much.
Why this book is considered by some to be a complement to Moby Dick I could not understand at all, either.
I could go on and on with the things I didn't like. I can't believe I read the whole thing. I kept thinking something had to get better because this book was well-reviewed when it first came out. But it doesn't get better, it gets worse.

Rating:
Summary: Booooring!!!!
Review: If you are an insomniac this book is wonderful for you - if nothing else it will put you asleep in record time. A constant "bla, bla, bla", pages upon pages of lengthy conversations or monologues exploring each others or oneselves deepest "feelings". One can skip entire chapters and still the story is no further along than just another pages long of Unas musings. It feels as if the author has to communicate to the readers that she is well educated, hence all the literary references and mentioning of famous names.
If you like an interesting story you can safely skip this one.

Rating:
Summary: Oh, What this could have been...
Review: I started out Ahab's Wife completely oblivious to what might have been. For nearly all of the book, I was rewarded with beautiful prose, well-spun scenes, vibrant characters and plots that pulled me right in.

However, the end of the book was so preposterous, so far-fetched that I was immediately allergic to all previous text. That Naslund could take such a brilliant work to that point and give such a farciful ending left me feeling cheated.

I can't pan it completely. Naslund writes with incredible description and philosophical insight. I just can't bring myself to forgive her for leaving me hanging this way.

Rating:
Summary: Indians, Dwarves, Contrivance and Plagiarism--All Here
Review: With 166 customer reviews already posted, another one is probably the last thing Naslund's book needs. However, since I did wade through all 666 pages, perhaps a few observations may be permitted. First, please understand that I came to this book really WANTING to like it. Melville's "Moby Dick" is one of my favorite novels, one of the very few that I have reread multiple times, and I wanted more of the multi-layered symbolism and dark philosophy of an amoral universe that permeates that wonderful tome. While I did find a dark tone, that was about it.

To enjoy a work of fiction, I must be able to follow Coleridge's admonition to suspend disbelief; that is, the story and the characters must appear sufficiently realistic that the reader is able to believe that everything COULD have happened just the way the book describes it. However, nearly every event throughout Naslund's book sounds contrived and highly improbable. In several instances, the reader feels that Naslund herself does not understand her characters and is unable to explain their relationships or actions. For instance, we first are led to believe that Kit's insanity is a logical result of his enforced cannibalism. Later, we feel that it may be a result of Giles' sexual assault. Finally, we are told that Kit's mother was also insane because she, too, was known to have urinated in public, so now we can conclude that the fellow inherited his insanity. If all this isn't sufficiently ambiguous, let us examine Kit and Giles' entire relationship, long before the cannibalism business. Their togetherness certainly leads the reader to conclude that they have long been lovers, yet the shock to Kit of Giles' later sexual domination throws the nature of their entire relationship into question, a question that is never resolved.

Many other events come along that make the reader think he has stepped thoroughly into the Twilight Zone. I scarcely think that Una would have felt so comfortable while visiting her new business acquaintance, a washerwoman, only to have Mary strip her down, plunk her into a tub of water, and comment on her body parts! And what is this business of Isaac Starbuck, the gaoler, all about? He starts out as a Christ-like image, golden haired, good hearted, a literal savior to Pip. He is killed in the fire (we are led to believe), only to rise from the dead and walk among the living again, but never does he play a significant role in relation to Una. He marries, is widowed, and remarries, but never to our heroine. Why is he in the novel? What is his function?

Then there's the name-dropping: Margaret Fuller, Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, Frederick Douglass, and Henry James all make appearances, but to what purpose the reader is unable to determine. The image of Una's coming upon Hawthorne on a forest path, his face obscured by a black veil, is almost too contrived to be endured. The veil may indeed be intended as a symbol of Hawthorne's dark spirit blocking the beauty of nature, but the symbol is not believable and, thus, fails to convince.

Occasionally, themes come close to developing. Una seems to be both fathered and husbanded by lunatics. Nearly every good thing that comes along is followed by disaster, death, loss, hardship. However, Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" does a much better job of presenting the plight of a humanity that has been damned by the wrath of a vengeful Old Testament god. Una's philosophy of oneness with the universe is clearly expressed near the end of the novel but is reminiscent of Robert Heinlein's "We are made of star stuff," thoughts published decades ago. Of her own writings, she says they are "but a draft of a draft," directly plagiarizing Melville. And if one wishes to see the source of Naslund's inspiration for the sinking of the whaleship Sussex and subsequent events, read Philbrick's "In the Heart of the Sea," a more graphic yet historically factual telling of the disaster.

Readers of pulp romances may find Naslund's book fascinating, but its lack of well-developed themes and its population of unbelievable characters engaged in artificially contrived adventures left this reader wanting much more than the novel delivered.

Rating:
Summary: LOVED LOVED LOVED
Review: I cannot recommend this book enough to everyone I meet, so I had to write a review here. Naslund's writing is beautiful and elegant. The characters are believable and the story amazing. The book was long yes, but I did not want it to end. It was just the most amazing journey to go on- starting from Una's childhood and ends...wel I won't tell you that. Please do yourself a favor and read it right away. I don't go back and re-buy many books, but I simply must have this one in hardcover.