Recent Reading: The North Water

 

Yesterday I finished reading Ian McGuire's The North Water. (Note: picture taken in my garden with parsley in the background.)

At least in my opinion, the book is an adventure story told in three acts:

• Act One: a modern version of Moby Dick with a crew of sailors on the hunt for whales.
• Act Two: a Jack London type story of man against nature after the boat crashes off the coast of Greenland. This is the part of the story some readers might find gruesome.
• Act Three: a revenge murder related to an insurance fraud.

I found the book to be quite the page turner and recommend it.

The NYTimes called it one of the ten best books of 2016. Here is what they said about the book:

Propelled by a vision that is savage, brutal and relentless, McGuire relates the tale of an opium-addicted 19th-century Irish surgeon who encounters a vicious psychopath on board an Arctic-bound whaling ship. With grim, jagged lyricism, McGuire describes violence with unsparing color and even relish while suggesting a path forward for historical fiction. Picture a meeting between Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy in some run-down port as they offer each other a long, sour nod of recognition.

Colm Toibin also has a full-length review of the book in the NYTimes. 

I must say that I am grateful to my public library for giving me access to McGuire's book. I read the book on my kindle while listening to an audiobook version on my iPod Touch. I also checked out a hardcover of the book so I could see what the cover looks like and how the book feels in my hands from time to time while I read it.

I see that The North Water was a miniseries on AMC last year. I have not seen that version.