The Nautical Chart

Rating:
Summary: Not Perez-Reverte's Best!
Review: After Perez-Reverte's THE FENCING MASTER, I must admit I was up for a really good read. But this one didn't keep that promise. Well, of course, a batter doesn't get a hit every time he's up and I suppose that is the case even with a skilled writer like Mr. Perez-Reverte.

This tale starts with Manuel Coy, merchant seaman and pilot fallen on hard times, having been banned from the sea for two years, standing and clutching a bloody wound as the narrator introduces him and his story. But the narrator, himself, remains invisible to us until the last quarter of the book . . . and doesn't count for very much, when he finally does appear. In fact he barely plays any role in the tale at all, so it's not entirely clear why Perez-Reverte thought he needed such a distracting device.

Worse, the story the narrator is ostensibly telling us contains so many private incidents, which he could not possibly have been privy to, that his role as a recounter of these events strikes one as terminally odd. Either he's a liar or a spinner of fantasies, though when we finally meet him, there is no reason to think he is either. If he had not faded thankfully from view once more at the end, his presence surely would have ruined the entire wrap-up. But, in fact, at the end, our barely visible narrator is nowhere to be seen, gratefully forgotten by the author . . . just as he had been for the bulk of the tale.

Still, despite the fact that this story is often very slow going with a great deal of digression and seemingly irrelevant information thrown our way, an overly long slog to find the object of the search, and a singularly dull protagonist (Coy is forever attacking the other side in bloody dust-ups when they get together for various "peaceful" confabs . . . in fact he does it so often you have to wonder how dumb these clever, professional treasure hunters can possibly be, given their persistent failure to anticipate Coy's predictable attacks) . . . despite all of this, I have to say that the story still kept my attention, though I did tend to pick it up and put it down quite a bit more than I usually do when reading a good book.

The fact that Coy lusts after Tanger seems to be the only thing driving him and this, combined with his brutal conferencing methods, makes one wonder why she even keeps him around. Even he wonders about this himself, almost incessantly actually, though it doesn't seem to deter him or make him any more aware of his situation. In fact, Tanger's almost complete indifference to him, even after they seem to have hit it off, has to make you wonder just how dumb Coy can be. True, he's portrayed as a simple sailor, uneducated in all but the ways of the sea, but he seems abnormally dull, even for that. Even El Piloto, his old mate, seems to be sharper than he is.

The final denouement picks up the story's pace again, though the outcome is not particularly satisfying. It brings us back to Coy clutching at his bloody wound, having shown us how he got to that point . . . but it leaves us with no real sense that anything has really happened besides the landlocked sailor's brief excursion into the mysteries of other human beings which continue, at the end, to confound him. What Coy takes away from it all seems to be little more than the wound in his side, the blood running down his legs, and continued confusion.

And yet, despite the sometimes overly detailed facts about sea life, and the novel's faltering about midway though, it recovers at the end as we learn the secret in the story of the "knights and knaves." I won't tell you what that's about . . . but the book will if you want to try one of Perez-Reverte's less successful efforts. It is readable if you've the patience for it.

SWM

Rating:
Summary: Good story for sea-lovers
Review: I have always loved stories related to the sea, and so this book appealed to me from the start. The premise is good: a grounded sailor develops a quick crush on a mysterious blonde he encounters at a maritime objects auction in Barcelona. He goes after her in Madrid and discovers she is looking for a sunken XVIII century ship, which should be buried under the sea outside the Mediterranean Spanish coast. And, she happens to be in need of someone with time and deep knowledge of the seas. Coy, the sailor, signs for the deal, not least because by now he is madly in love with her, Tangier. But it happens that there is someone else in search for the enigmatic ship, this time a professional treasure-hunter from Gibraltar, a man who has a very dangerous sidekick, an Argentinian ex-torturer. Coy recruits his old buddy, the Pilot, to take them in his boat and go looking for the ship. Why this ship attracts so many attention I will not spoil for you, but it is an interesting and exciting tale. Some reviewers complain about the long discussions on things maritime, but I tended to like them.

The book's strong points: the link to an ancient adventure and the historical background. Perez Reverte does his homework and is very good at surrounding his tales with historical roots. That gives the present-day adventure an epic aura. The political intrigue surrounding the historical event is another thing Perez Reverte likes to do and is good at. One further strong point that should be remarked, since it gives the book much of its appeal, is the author's ability to vividly depict places. Of course he has the advantage of locating his story in beautiful towns of Southern Spain, which hardly need any embellishment, and especially in Cartagena, where Perez Reverte himself was born and obviously knows very well. Plus, the story is ingenious.

Unfortunately, the book has one weak point, but one that is crucial in distinguishing a good novel from a great work of art. In fact, it is the cornerstone of great literature: the characters. The best-crafted character is the main one, Coy, a likable loser and basically a good and brave man. It is obvious, and the author makes no secret of it, that this character was inspired by Conrad's Lord Jim, but without the tragic, Shakespearean overtones. But most of his expressions are cliches. Nevertheless, I think every reader will root for Coy. The woman, on the other hand, is totally unlikeable. She's not even sexy. Another reviewer here was right when he thought of her as a spoiled little brat. I didn't want her to win. As a character, she's flat as flat can be. The Pilot is commonplace tough-but-good-guy, a wise old man. And the bad guys seem to jump right out of a Disney movie. The boss would be a wolf and the Argentinian a bad rat. They are the weakest point of the book.

Anyway, it's a good entertainment but don't look here for the great literary achievement.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent pop novel, mediocre "intellectual thriller."
Review: One of Perez-Reverte's most outstanding characteristics has always been his ability to incorporate academic research and arcane and thought-provoking historical data into an exciting and stimulating historical mystery. In the past, this research has always been an integral part of the novel's structure, and woe be unto the reader who, half-asleep when reading, misses a key detail or fails to note some crucial connection necessary to understanding the conclusion. This novel is different. Though it contains an intellectual mystery, it is also part treasure hunt, love story, character study, and treatise on sexual politics.

Not totally successful on any of these levels, I found the novel entertaining, but lacking those special characteristics which have always made Perez-Reverte's books so mentally engaging. The story is relatively simple. Coy, a seaman who has been suspended for two years because of an accident, begins working for Tanger Soto, a pretty, blonde librarian for the Museo Naval, who has purchased a maritime atlas which will help her to locate a sunken ship. The ship, owned by the Jesuits, sank in 1767, and Tanger believes it carries a treasure, which she intends to find. Predictable complications ensue.

The plot divides into two parts--the first part is exciting and full of action as Coy and Tanger launch their search, while the second part is almost dead, as their rivals for the treasure disappear for almost 200 pages. Perez-Reverte tries to keep the excitement going by having a particularly nasty rival reappear, menacingly, from time to time on shore, but eventually the author has to resort to the cute trick of introducing a completely new character, the narrator, to juice up the narrative and the search for the sunken ship. Even the foreshadowing is often heavy-handed: "He suspected that later...he would need to remember something about this place." Tanger, the "love interest," is distant and duplicitous, and Coy is warned by virtually everyone in the book that she can't be trusted, something that prevents the reader from being caught up in the love story. All in all, I found this below Perez-Reverte's past accomplishments, both in story and in execution, entertaining enough, but not the intellectual thriller I expected.