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Summary: Fiction is sometimes as tough as the truth
Review: A fictional account of a 19th century American exploration to northern Greenland, Andrea Barrett has crafted an extraordinary fable of failure, cruelty, regret and righteousness. She writes of an ambitious and determined young man, Zeke Voorhees, who has much book knowledge and little experience. Voorhees commands a ship, the "Narwhal", (ostensibly) bound for the arctic to search for a lost Englishman. Zeke becomes a fiend in his failing quest for fame and glory. He eventually destroys everyone around him. The Eskimos he meets are far more savvy than his crew--they dub him "The One Who is Trouble" (though to his face they say it means "Great Explorer"). The sympathetic character in the story is Zeke's older brother-in-law, Erasmus Wells. Wells, with his equally spectacular defeat, becomes the tragic hero-much like Hemingway's OLD MAN AND THE SEA. The VOYAGE OF THE NARWHAL is wonderfully written but doused heavily in defeat, disappointment and things gone awry. I personally prefer a novel to have a dream (at least one!) answered than to mimic the heavy defeat already so prevalent in reality.
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Summary: A failed attempt to write a novel of exploration.
Review: Andrea Barrett's novel begins promisingly, as it takes the reader on a voyage into unfamiliar territory in the Arctic. Unfortunately, her prose does not convey vividly the details of this journey. For a reader who knows the superb depictions of the Arctic provided by Barry Lopez in _Arctic Dreams_ or, latterly, by Wade Davis in an essay in _Shadows in the Sun_, most of Barrett's prose seems flat and unremarkable. This is unfortunate because occasionally she does create beautiful images that vivify the narrative.Equally vexing is her central character, Erasmus, a feckless, neurasthenic fellow whose few belated actions are insufficient to carry the narrative. (Near the end of the work, Erasmus issues what could be the reader's lament, as he states the following about himself: "How slow to make crucial decisions. To sense what's going on around me." Such a limited character is hardly the ideal center for a narrative.) Opposing him is a hubristic villain, Zeke, whose character and behavior are so nebulous that we do not know what to think of him. Barrett's characters seem so bloodless, so lacking in passion, that one wonders in what sense they are alive. Jorge Luis Borges said that great literature is "a guide dream." Barrett falters as our guide: she hurries through certain key sections of the story, so that the details prove sketchy and unsatisfying. Her work provokes an invidious comparison with the nautical fiction of Patrick O'Brian, whose portrayals of scenery, natural history, and characters are consistently excellent. If Barrett had considered the nature of her story (and that of her characters) more carefully, she could have written a memorable work that would keep the reader's interest: she does write well at times, so that one discerns the shape of the novel that might have been.
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Summary: A gorgeous and memorable page-turner
Review: I heard Andrea Barrett read a section of this book, and the room went dead silent -- you could see people sitting forward in their chairs, even holding their breath. Ten seconds after she finished, there was a roar of applause. I got the book and read it right away -- over a single weekend, ignoring every other thing I was supposed to be doing. Then I started buying copies for other people. This book is heartbreaking and happy, memorable and absorbing, an amazing combination of a lose-yourself-read and a beautifully written and imagined work of art. The people I've given this to have been amazed by it. This book appeals to 1) people who love contemporary literature and the ways it illuminates our lives; 2) people who love Victorian novels, Eliot and Dickens and the Brontes, those huge books that create a whole world full of three-dimensional, living characters and the society they live in; 3) people who are interested in history, anthropology, and science, people who like to be smarter when they finish a novel; 4) travel book lovers, who want a book to take them on a trip; 5) people who want a novel to wrestle with great questions, to have their moral capacities challenged and expanded. Although there is sadness in this book, the reader isn't abandoned to a fashionably gloomy view of life. The beginning is beautiful; the ending is perfect; the middle is fascinating and moving and thought-provoking. How can one book do all this? So many people I know are talking about this book. "How does she DO it?" they say. I just can't imagine how she managed to write this book. I'm only grateful she did.
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Summary: A scholarly and compelling drama, beautifully written
Review: This is a fantastic and beautiful novel. The premise is interesting. The background research that must have been involved impressive. The scientific facts discussed informative. The story riveting. And the writing beautiful. I was particularly enthralled by the sections concerning the winter isolation of the ice-bound Narwhal and her crew, replete with exposure of the spiritual and physical deprivation of such an experience. I also found the characters unusual and this added as well to the interest of the work. This is a book I will remember and turn over in my mind for a long time.
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Summary: In the region of Ice
Review: I so wanted to love this novel, and for the first hundred pages or so, I did. Moody and atmospheric,it held the promise of being a stark exploration of the cost of exploration: the cost to the explorers and to those they "found." I was hoping this fiction would do what fiction does best, i.e., provide a much needed antidote to our misguided (but cherished) myths of fearless voyagers, etc, most recently and notably celebrated in Stephen Ambrose's fervent"history" of Lewis and Clark. But I found that, as the Narwhal's voyage founders, so does the novel. The main character turns out to be a sort of 19th century slacker, ultimately redeemed by the love of a good woman, and well, you know the rest. A noble attempt, but ultimately not redeemed by Barrett's haunting prose style.
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Summary: Andrea Barrett reinvents the historical novel.
Review: I have never reviewed a book on line before, but I think it's important to tell the world how great this book is. Andrea Barrett's "Ship Fever" was a marvelous thing, but her preoccupations with the development of natural science and the kinds of people drawn to it are brought to full effect in The Voyage of the Narwhal. She chooses to write about a remote time (1850's) and place (way up north among the Esquimaux) in order to talk about all the things that concern us, here and now: the environment, cultural imperialism, fame, feminism, travel. In the meantime, the plot goes compellingly forward, and for a moment, we forget ourselves, and become one of these adventurers--as hungry for knowledge and discovery as they are--and when we learn the price exacted for such discovery, we are stunned--THAT is just one of the lessons Barrett has to offer. Please read this book. It is WHAT WE WANT.
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Summary: You'd be a fool to miss it!
Review: Congratulations to Andrea Barrett on a thoughtful and uncannily well-researched book! I was impressed by her idea not just to rewrite any mid-19th-century Arctic traveller's tale but to extend the novel's room for manoeuvre to the journey's aftermath. A cast of intriguing characters takes the reader back to the past century amidst vividly painted details of contemporary everyday life, and at the end of the book one is left with the impression that this is just the way such a course of events might have unfolded like in reality. I'd recommend "The Voyage of the Narwhal" to anyone willing to cast a look behind the travelogue machinery as it emerged during a century partly obsessed with the mysterious Arctic. A splendid work in every respect! The only thing to be regretted is that the admirable Dr. Boerhaave has to leave the stage midway through the book.
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Summary: A GOOD READ . . . BARRETT EXHIBITS MARVELOUS WRITING SKILLS
Review: This book will not keep you on the "edge of your seat" (certainly not a prerequisite for a great novel) but it was thoroughly interesting piece of work. Barrett's style is wonderfully flowing and uncomplicated. I was always hoping that Erasmus Wells, naturalist and best friend to the voyage commander, "Zeke" Voorhees, would have been less passive when it was realized that Zeke's obsession for fame was out of control. I recommend this book to serious readers. I have not read Ms. Barrett's award-winning "Ship Fever" but based on this new novel, I am certainly planning on doing so. Thank you Ms. Barrett for a truly fine piece of literature!
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Summary: Never did feeling so cold feel so satisfying...
Review: Andrea Barrett's work is breathtaking on several fronts. Her characters are excellently drawn, with enough idiosyncrasies per character to flesh them out and make them seem real. She is a master, as this book shows, at expressing the awful majesty and the poetry of exploration. The act of discovery is a process combining joy, disappointments, fears, determination, prejudices, and endurance: each voyage of exploration is a struggle within oneself to reconcile these competing emotions. Barrett does a magnificent job of detailing an example of this struggle amongst a group of men who, while obstensibly searching the frigid Arctic for traces of a lost expedition and for an open polar sea, also become engaged in a search for their own hidden souls. In a single story Barrett shows how a voyage of exploration can be a thing of triumphant discovery and at the same time a bitter, divisive quest for mere survival. Most of all, though, Barrett has the gift of bringing her literary environment to full life: when Wells, Zeke, and their crew were locked in for a winter by massive ice packs, when they huddled in the relative warmth of an Eskimeux's shelter, when they pulled the ship across ice floes in a brutal struggle to move forward, I felt that. Barrett made me feel that cold, that warmth, that bitter need to survive, and she made me shiver with her wonderful descriptions of the frozen Arctic. This is a book to cherish, to be cherished by all of us who ever dreamed of exploring the unknown corners of the world.
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Summary: Arctic exploration as beautiful music.
Review: "Voyage of the Narwhal" reminds me of Milos Forman's masterpiece - the cinematic rendition of Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus." For Vienna substitute the High Arctic, Philadelphia, and the Keene Valley of New York's Adirondacks. For Mozart substitute the historical arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane. For Solieri substitute two figures -- one you'll want to forget and one that you won't be able to. The first is Zechariah Voorhees, a megalomaniac who wants to have his name attached to some part of the world and is willing to sacrifice anyone toward his end. The second is Erasmus Darwin Wells, a 40ish naturalist, who's career -- despite good intentions and much hard work -- has failed to live up to that of his famous namesake. He is frustrated by many unfulfilled expectations including finding a fellow human with whom he can communicate deeply. As the title implies "Voyage" covers a lot of water - most of it frozen. It also covers a lot of ground including one of the most important intellectual debates of the mid-nineteenth century and the inner workings of men's and women's souls. The story revolves around the fascination of the era for Arctic exploration. The men who led those ventures where treated much as today's Rock Star idols. "All over Philadelphia, merchants and tavern keepers had picked up on the craze...shop's displayed seal-trimmed jackets...hairdressers styled tresses in casual topknots emulating the Greenland belles...one might order a dish called 'Dr. Kane's Relief,'...a hot brandy drink was called 'Ice and Darkness,' an ale 'Kane's Dew'..." I had an unfair advantage in assessing the veracity of Ms. Barrett's descriptions of the high Arctic and the experience of living there. The crew of the Narwhal was forced to overwinter in the bay just off the Knud Peninsula of Ellesmere Island - an area that I had the privilege of skiing and dogsledding through this Spring. Her descriptions of the arctic splendor rekindled many vivid memories. Equally important, she does not shirk from describing some of the personal aggravations that can make traveling in that country at times miserable. "Robert would remember his persistent, burning diarrhea, and the humiliation of soiling his pants when he strained against the weight of the sledge." Interleaving the story throughout the book is the contemporaneous debate about the origin of the races. More down to earth there are undercurrents of the American cultural conflict that was about to erupt with cannon fire over Fort Sumter. Among many tragedies, the Civil War would obscure the "arctic in people's minds as if it were no more than legend: here are the hinges on which the world turns and limits of the circuits of the stars." If you can afford it, don't hold off for the paperback edition. The binding and typography of "Voyage" are a treat in themselves. Also, the author's selection of engravings of Arctic sailing ships and taxidermy are wonderful. Other treats are her selected quotations from the literature of that time. This is a scholarly work and while Ms. Barrett does not disrupt the narrative with footnotes and references, she does provide a bibliography of her sources. Returning to my musical analogy, "Voyage of the Narwhal" is a beautiful composition. Am I presumptuous to compare reading it to the joy of listening to a Mozart aria?
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