The North Water: A Novel

By Ian McGuire
2016
272 pages / 9 hours and 40 minutes
Fiction

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A few years ago I decided to give Moby Dick another chance. I think I had read it once many years ago – or at least I was supposed to and made a good faith effort. This time I decided I would do it by audiobook. After all, it is sometimes referred to as “the American Bible” and it was a revelation. All I remembered from my first attempt was the slog through all the whale trivia. But the first third of the book is brilliant. I admit the middle third is trying to say the least. The final third was the most exciting thing I'd listened to in years. As I was walking and listening I had to extend my walk and found myself almost breaking into a run as the book’s conclusion came rushing toward me. I then understood that the best reason to read Moby Dick is not all of the deep meanings that are certainly rumbling around beneath the surface of the sea but because it is a bracing good story. If you intend to mess with this story you had better do something pretty good.

The North Water by Ian McGuire is by no means a Moby Dick knockoff, but let's just say it partakes of the mood and spirit of that great novel. The Irish surgeon Patrick Sumner has some serious skeletons in his closet. He signs up to be the ship's doctor on a whaling vessel because he can't really find anyone else who will have him. The ship’s crew are a tough and sometimes villainous lot.

In trying to describe the book I can't resist this lovely line from Colm Toibin’s New York Times review: “‘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 long, sour nod of recognition.” [1] Exactly.

If Moby Dick is about obsession, then The North Water is about evil. What's not to like about a book whose most villainous character is named Drax? But the book is not so much about good and evil as it is about evil and evil and even more evil. If all that sounds a little on the gloomy side, believe me, it is. But McGuire is an absolutely exquisite writer, and the pages roll as quickly as you can turn them. The New York Times Book Review picked this as one of its 10 Best Books of the year, and it is most deserving.

There are plot twists and revelations and a frantic chase at the end which is almost as compelling as the end of Moby Dick. I listened to this book as well, and once again my walk got extended and my pace picked up and I got more than my share of cardio as the last half hour plummeted forward.

The book is violent and won’t be everyone's cup of tea but as an adventure tale with great literary merit and a deep moral sense, it has (outside of Cormac McCarthy) few competitors.

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[1] Colm Toibin, “Colm Toibin Reviews ‘The North Water’ by Ian McGuire,” New York Times (April 11, 2016).