Ahab's Wife

Rating:
Summary: gripping story, if you skip the philosophizing
Review: The heroine has an exciting life--enough for three lives. At first, I couldn't put it down, then, I got bored by the philosophizing in between the "juicy parts." One wonders if the author is trying to be a poet in the middle of her novel.
I especially liked the charcterizations, though some of them were too stock, too stereotyped. The book could've been improved by shortening it about 200 pages.
Still, I would recommend it as a good story of whaling times; what it's like aboard ship; life in Nantucket; how men felt about women and visa-versa; the plight of slaves, and childbirth in the 19th C.

Rating:
Summary: There's Something Fishy About Ahab's Wife...
Review: Ahab's Wife will have you sad, chuckling, charmed, and very irritated. You can expect to experience all this at the beginning, which is actually the middle, of this marvelous, rediculous novel.

The story begins with Una in the throes of a horrifying labor. She is alone and perplexed as to why her mother has not returned with the doctor and so engages in flights of fancy when she is not sleeping. I assumed she had grown slightly deranged from her ordeal but, no, Una is just enjoying a child-like mystic contemplation, as she does throughout the novel, and you come to understand Una is simply shallow. Though author Naslund attempts to give Una depth, Naslund waffles between pathos and silliness, often ending with the rediculous, as when Una is divorced by Ahab and married to Ahab- by Ahab- within a moment- and is accepted by an entire town as married.

Naslund seems to have difficulty deciding whether she is writing a significant historical novel, a seedy True Romance, or fantasy. Once Una finally starts at her story's "beginning" you find yourself delighted with the character and her adopted family on their little island. The writing was so beautiful my toes curled with the rich imagery. Then Una does an abrupt personality change, chops her hair, and goes to sea as a boy - and the fantasy begins! Una skips from one preposterous scenario to another so fast your head spins, with Naslund working overtime to explain how she gets away with it all, while characters we have come to adore and admire are either literally or figuratively tossed into the ocean. Like Indiana Jones, Una always lands on her feet, alone, but never for long.

Ahab's Wife is at it's best when,through Una eyes, we are given the opportunity to "see" so much of all that surrounds us in a new light. As an artist I relished the manner in which author Naslund sparked my imagination, The novel is also full of intelligent bits that are charming, from golden byssus to Augustin Fresnel to Maria Mitchell. It's great fun but, like Una, shallow.

Rating:
Summary: A good romance for the homebound
Review: If you are a shut-in who likes to keep one eye on the skies, this might be the book for you. Who was Ahab? You might well ask, he was a fictional character in Herman Melville's American Renaissance masterpiece Moby-Dick or The Whale, and his name has become a watchword for monomania and for obsession, particularly when lived in an all-male world of men and their pursuits. His quest to kill the white whale forms the backbone of Melville's Novel, and in Jeter Naslund's epic tale, it forms a significant subplot.

You won't believe the adventures young UNA gets up to when, disguised as a teenaged boy, she sets sail on a whaler herself and becomes entangled, like Cukor's film of SYLVIA SCARLETT, with two very different men. Okay, it's a little farfetched, but it's still very romantic, and Una has a poetic voice that will remind readers with long memories of the late Elinor Wylie. Only you can tell if she was able to extend the captivating voice to cover the length of so many pages (nearly as long as Clinton's memoirs!) or if, somewhere along the way, Una becomes as shadowy as her elderly husband's plans for vengeance. In the meantime, it's a good romance for people with lots of time, and perhaps the perfect summer book for folks vacationing in Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard.

No matter which, you'll enjoy it, it's a real page turner, at least for some of it.