Rating: 
Summary: Sensuous
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a great book
Review: What a great book. I would suggest that anyone should read this. It was very informing and very interesting.
Rating: 
Summary: Great idea, but tough reading
Review: I had high expectations of this book and was therefore disappointed. The story seemed to be exciting, but I had too much trouble with ship and navigation jargon to even want to complete the book. I imagine that it was intended for people with more knowledge of ships, navigation tools, etc.
Rating: 
Summary: Tedious
Review: Not a bad read, but it pales in comparison to the real thing. I refer to Roland Huntford's "The Last Place on Earth," the story of Scott and Amundsen's race to the South Pole. What a story! Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Physical and moral struggles of Arctic exploration
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Arctic arrogance and melodrama
Review: After reading other customer and critical reviews I think we need some balance here. I was looking forward to this book and then terribly disappointed when I got into it. What a great idea for a plot! What great research on the setting! What an unbelievable man is Zeke: a devil with a fox on his shoulder. The women tend to be simpletons, so we are left with Erasmus and Ned as the only real people in the book. The plot bogged down in unbelievable detail, and the ending was pure romance novel. Not for me. I am fascinated by writing about the Arctic, but I'll stick with "Arctic Dreams."
Rating:
Summary: Definitely a winner
Review: This book deserves the highest praise. I wasnt sure I wanted to read a book about the exploration of the artic but I am glad I try it. This work is a perfect example of the power of fiction. It transports us to worlds we never imagined and enlightens our minds. I feel like I traveled north with Zeke, Eramus and Ned.
Rating:
Summary: thrilling exploration of "failure"
Review: this book works best as a collection of terrible, brief images which are difficult to escape. death is often described in a single sentence, in a very spare, matter-of-fact way. while barrett's descriptions are breathtaking and exact, there's nothing romantic or sentimental here- the environment or simple accidents will just kill you outright.yes, the characters are slightly flat and their motives not always well defined... but this seems intentional. they are almost totally overshadowed by the terrifying arctic, and in the later third of the novel, by the uneasy, somewhat unreal world they return to.
Rating:
Summary: Voyage of Discovery Serves as Exploration of Heart and Mind
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: In a word: marvelous.
Review: 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!!!!!!!
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