Longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker PrizeA New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “The North Water…is a great white shark of a book swift, terrifying, relentless and unstoppable.” Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Riveting and darkly brilliant .The North Water feels like the result of an encounter between Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy in some run-down port as they offer each other a … Joseph Conrad and Cormac McCarthy in some run-down port as they offer each other a long, sour nod of recognition.
Colm Toibin, The New York Times Book Review
” An] audacious work of historical suspense fiction…It’s the poetic precision of McGuire’s harsh vision of the past that makes his novel such a standout…absolutely transporting.”
Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air
A nineteenth-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard in this dark, sharp, and highly original tale that grips like a thriller.
Behold the man: stinking, drunk, and brutal. Henry Drax is a harpooner on the Volunteer, a Yorkshire whaler bound for the rich hunting waters of the arctic circle. Also aboard for the first time is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money, and no better option than to sail as the ship’s medic on this violent, filthy, and ill-fated voyage.
In India, during the Siege of Delhi, Sumner thought he had experienced the depths to which man can stoop. He had hoped to find temporary respite on the Volunteer, but rest proves impossible with Drax on board. The discovery of something evil in the hold rouses Sumner to action. And as the confrontation between the two men plays out amid the freezing darkness of an arctic winter, the fateful question arises: who will survive until spring?
With savage, unstoppable momentum and the blackest wit, Ian McGuire’s The North Water weaves a superlative story of humanity under the most extreme conditions.
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“The North Water,” by Ian McGuire, was published in 2016. The novel received a good bit of buzz, including making the lists for the Man Booker prize, LA Times Book Prize 2017, and the NY Times Top Ten Notable books. The buzz is deserved; I thoroughly enjoyed this dark novel. But before the reader dives in, let me offer a word of caution. If the reader is expecting a bold, clean, historical adventure novel, my advice would be to run far, far away.
The waters in this story are not just in the North, not just cold, but very dark as well. McGuire dives fearlessly into his characters, some of whom are likely to repulse the reader. This is a rough tale, not in the writing, but in the tale itself. The tale unfolds on a whaling ship crewed by hard men in hard times. Our protagonist thinks this whaling ship will be a good place to hide from a past disgrace. He will find himself to be very, very wrong. Whaling is a dangerous occupation to begin with. When the crew of the whaling ship includes a heartless murderer, it is very dangerous indeed.
“The North Water” is, indeed, a historical adventure novel. But it is a very dark adventure, populated with some repellent and obscene characters. The story arcs across the stage of arctic water and ice, all the while getting grimmer and grimmer. If you love a dark tale, well-written and well-told, this is the novel for you.
I did not like this book at all. Did not finish reading it.
Unnecessary cruelty and violence with no point. Story ends abruptly and has no point other than how cruel men can be.
Well written. Powerful storytelling. Good stuff.
You know a book is worth checking out when reviews are so wildly and passionately divergent. And yes, this is a brutal book. The cruelty in it, the absolute amorality and lack of any compassion, is hard to take, but I think–rather than take your anger out on the book–this is a sign that the author has done his job. The very fact that it elicits the reactions that it does in its portrait of evil connects us to our core humanity, and that is one of the foundations of great narrative art. Were and are men as evil as portrayed in this book? Yes. Absolutely. So must we confront it and co-exist with it? The narrator/main character does his best in this regard. What a brutal world it depicts, and, acknowledging that, we have to also acknowledge the darkness in our own hearts. For me, it only reinforced my love of humanity, of animals, of all life. Also, the writing is fantastic. And un-put-down-able.
Rarely do I abandon a book partway through but I did so after one more instance of animal cruelty. I am not a pansy when it comes to gritty violence or twisted plots but this book did absolutely nothing for my love of reading and great storytelling. I disliked the characters and hated the violence towards animals and people. I disliked everything about this story and couldn’t have cared less about any of the characters and where the story was taking them.
It was brutal, but I couldn’t put it down,
Liked it a lot.
Not just blood and guts. But pus and shattered bone and unrelenting descriptions of the human body in distress. And animals in distress. Just raw bloody life and death. So completely unsentimental that you start wishing for a little sentiment. But not really. Also very beautiful descriptions of Arctic landscape and seascape. Mesmerizing. Surreal. These passages seem completely true even when they don’t seem quite true. They feel as much about today as then. You feel so glad you are on an airplane reading about this life instead of living this life.