Rating: 
Summary: The narcissism is thick enough to plough!
Review: I have to agree with what many reviewers here have said about this strangely popular piece of fanfiction: the main character strains the reader's credibility to the point where it becomes comical. Una is, quitely simple, what folks in the fanfiction universe call a "Mary Sue". (Google this term and have a good read if you are interested.) What is a Mary Sue? Mary Sues are hopelessly idealized characters who exists primarily as a projection of the writer's ego and fantasies. They serve a psychological need: they make their creators happy. They do not ebcome larger than that. All the important men in the novel fall in love with Una. Una is gifted and strangely well informed for a teenage girl whop never went to school and grew up in a lighthouse-- even analyzing poetry in exactly the same theory heavy way one would expect from a 20th century literature professor! Who would have thunk it? Most of what comes out of her mouth is just too precious after about page fifty, ah but of course everyone adores her for it! She takes up all of the fashionable causes (reflecting attitudes that are entirely 20th century, including Save the Whales) and serves them all heroically, flits through all kinds of extreme experiences (including cannibalism) but remains remarkably unscarred psychologically, and of course no matter how much she betrays or hurts others.... Well, nobody is every really angry with Una! Oh and she meets everyone who was famous during that time, and they all either adore her or she gets the better of them. (Her depiction of Nathaniel Hawthorne is especially preposterous in this regard.) All in all, although the quality of writing was more developed and sophisticated, the level of imagination is not much better than what one might expect from a kid writing about a character (who is very sensitive and special, just like herself!) who stumbles into Middle Earth and captures the heart of Legolas the hunky, romantic elf. Fluff reading, folks, fluff reading.
Rating: 
Summary: vividly picturesque
Review: I loved it! I could see the words that Sena was writing. It is so vivid and touching and captures a moment in historic literature with such panache - carrying Moby Dick to a whole new level. It adds a feminine touch to historic American literature and captivates you at the same time.
I don't think it is the kind of book that keeps you up all night, anticipating what will happen next, but it certainly kept me coming back, eager to read the next page. ANd believe me, my hectic lifestyle doesn't leave a whole lot of spare time for pleaseure reading
Rating: 
Summary: Ahab's Wife
Review: Several things about this book are good. The sentence-level writing is often beautiful, and the characterization overall is strong. Una is a vivid and distinctive personality. Ahab is also surprisingly well characterized. However, overall this is a book I hesitate to wholeheartedly recommend. It's whale-like in its volume -- very long and *reads* very long because the proportion of philosophizing, exposition, and musings is very high compared to the amount of story. I felt there were too many themes, too many thoughts and symbols and ideas, and would have preferred fewer and better developed. The long passages of airy stuff get boring after a while. I was disappointed that Una never really experiences a crisis or has to deal with her own actions. She does a horrible thing--which I won't spoil for new readers-- but never seems compelled to expiation. Throughout the book, Una does various things that perhaps she shouldn't do, but she never really faces the consequences. Though many bad things happen to her, she always has friends and supporters and the hard times don't last. Most unrealistic to me was the way she attracts one man after another. I found the characters overall a bit hard to believe as nineteenth-century people: abolitionist, with mixed feelings about whaling, religiously tolerant, proto-feminist, overwhelmingly intellectual and constantly talking about literature... these beliefs did exist at the time, but I don't really see Una as coming from a background where I would expect them to be current, and when they are all combined and little dissent (with the brief exception of Una's religious father) exists, it reads like an attempt to make historical people palatable to modern-day readers. Which I'm not in favor of. Lastly, while I applaud the success of a "fanfic" book -- one which exists as an homage to another book, using some of its characters and its world -- and feel it's a more valid literary form than it gets credit for, Ahab's Wife falls into a common fanfic trap. That's having the main character romantically involved with several characters from the original book. Ahab was a given and works fine, but there's another character Una ends up with, and that element did not work for me at all; it seems unnecessary and inappropriate somehow. The vast amount of critical praise for this book surprises me a bit. It's an interesting effort, but I can't see it as great literature.
Rating:
Summary: Nantucket Gam
Review: This is the most amazing book and I am glad that others have recognized it as such. That opening sentence just grabbed me and pulled me in for days and days. The prose is almost hypnotizing. I could not put this book down. I also read the Wreck of the Whaleship Essex and even though Una's version of the shipwreck is fictional, to me the way they survived was written in a mystical, mystery way. To the naysayers, it is extremely plausible that Una would meet lots of famous people in Nantucket and Boston. New England is a relatively small place and in the 1800's was even more so. I myself lived on Nantucket until recently for over 10 years and crossed paths with the rich and famous daily. And New England, especially Nantucket, is a beautiful place, neither bleak nor stormy, except when one wants it to be. I just hope this does not turn into a movie starring Julia Roberts, let Una live in our imaginations.
Rating:
Summary: a woman far stronger than her husband
Review: "Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last." From the very beginning of this phenomenal book, Ahab is squarely put in his place and the richly fascinating life story of Una begins. Sent to live with her aunt and uncle on a lighthouse island to save her from her puritanical father, Una learns to love the sea, and by the age of 16 she is seeking work on a whaling ship by pretending to be a boy. Unfortunately, her search leads her to _The Essex_, a doomed real-life whaler which, in part, inspired Melville to write _Moby Dick_. Una falls into the life of a whaling boat easily, but when the boat is stove by a whale, she is forced into the most difficult situation imaginable. When she is rescued she slowly recovers and begins life anew. Una meets Ahab again (their ships had met at sea before the Essex disaster) as Nantucket is burning to the ground, and a connection is renewed. They marry and have children, and while he is away Una delves into the social, political, and intellectual world of 1800's New England. Of course, the reader knows that Ahab will be injured by a white whale and become obsessed with revenge, and therefore Una's life with him is infused with sadness. Una, however, is so strong-minded that she doesn't let circumstances bury her, and the reader grows to admire and even love her as she struggles beautifully through a difficult life. Incorporating many true events of the time and invoking other literary works, _Ahab's Wife_ is a rich, fulfilling novel which I became completely immersed in. One of the best books I have ever read.
Rating:
Summary: one of my favorites
Review: Ahabs Wife is one of the greatest novels I have read, it captivated me for three days and I could not stand to get up away from it , the Moby Dick plot is one I wouldn't normally read or like but I loved this book! It goes hand in hand with the red tent these are my two favorites
Rating:
Summary: A Delicious History of a Strong Woman
Review: Ahab's Wife was one of those books that totally consumed me. After finishing it, I pondered it and pondered it for days. Don't read this expecting a happy jaunt through this woman's life. This is, after all, the bleak northeast, and just as the wind howls, so do her experiences. Nevertheless, in her ragged walk I found a source of strength for my own life. I recommend this book as one of the rare finds in literature that truly transports you to another time, and place, and person.
Rating:
Summary: Literal, not literary
Review: For two-thirds of its length, through the heroine's marriage to Captain Ahab, the book is a crisp, well-thought page-turner, although it merely skims the philosophical depths one would expect of a feminine revision of Melville. The last third, however--from the use of fiction's most famous opening line in casual conversation, to the conclusion that reads more like a romance novel than real literature--removes all the scope and grandeur. Finally, truly, this *is* a romance novel, and not in the classical sense--it's in the true, modern scope of basing the narrative around the heroine's love life, and finally bringing that--and only that--to a satisfactory conclusion.
Rating:
Summary: The female companion to Moby-Dick.
Review: "Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last" drew me to Sena Jetter Naslund's story as strongly as Herman Melville's opening line in Moby-Dick "Call me Ishmael." Ahab's Wife is a mid-19th century tale of a "young girl-wife's" survival and growth. Mrs. Captain Una Ahab, a title earned, adventure begins when puberty and eligible young men arrive while she is isolated on a lighthouse island. Una's journey off the island forces her to ponder questions of religious fate, divinity, motherhood, madness, cannibalism, slavery, bounty hunters, revenge, chauvinism, ship mates, soul mates, infant death, grief, widows with their husbands alive at sea, sea-law marriages and divorces, widow makers -black whales, white whales, sperm whales and the joys of life even after widowhood. Instead of being fated as a spinster atop the grill work encircling the lighthouse lens, a figurehead aloft a whalers masthead or a sea wife pacing her widow-walk, Una survives on her strength of purpose. "I have found a way to wish till things happen" explains Una. "There was nothing abject about you," states Judge Lord "You had your purpose, your wish. Did you get your wish? Yes. That alone saves any human from abjectness. "In the old fairy tales, it is the strength of the wish that transforms life. The wish is itself the magic wand." While mankind struggles with the strength of will, prayer, dreams, hopes, aspirations and wishes, Naslund teaches the reader through Una, how to imagine themselves out of tragedy. That alone is worth the read.
Rating: 
Summary: A Woman worthy of Ahab
Review: Any book that rekindles my interest in Captain Ahab and crew, sufficiently enough to go back and read Moby Dick - this time in it's entirety - deserves praise. This is the story, told in the first person, of a girl from Kentucky whose life becomes inextricably linked with New England whaling and the legendary captain of the Pequod. Herman Mehlville briefly mentioned the existence of a partner for Ahab in his illustrious tome; Ms. Naslund takes that reference and imagines an entire life intertwined with people and events both real and literary. Naslund's heroine, Una is a strong character worthy of her fictional husband Ahab. Hers is a life that is rich and multi-textured as any you'll ever encounter. In fact, Ahab enters Una's life relatively late in the novel, long after she has been through her own whaling adventures, which include a ship that meets its demise via whale attack. This might not become the timeless classic of it's literary relation, but it's worthy of the association. It's an incredibly skillful piece of literary craftsmanship!
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