The Voyage of the Narwhal - Hardcover

Barrett, Andrea

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002257939 ISBN 13: 9780002257930

Publisher: Flamingo, 1999

Synopsis

‘One of the best novels of the decade’ Kirkus ‘A stunning novel’ Publishers Weekly ‘It is among the most emotionally wrenching, subtle works of the century’ amazon.com

Many an ambitious Victorian voyager was mesmerized northwards to the Pole and Zeke Voorhees, an irrepressible young man brought up on marine yarns, is one such. His own inherent magnetism gathers to him a ship’s crew as varied and as intriguing as the polar flora and fauna two of their number are so keen to observe as natural historians. Voorhees sets his ship’s course in the wake of Franklin’s infamous expedition in search of an Open Polar Sea, but the Narwhal soon runs into difficulties all its own. Meanwhile, back home in a New England humming with new ideas, all is frustration for the women the brave explorers leave behind...

A brilliant portrait of a society obsessed with mapping and classifying everything under the sun – including the icy Arctic – where the
emancipation of women and the evolution of species are the next great revolutions just stirring into life; and where a man (but not a woman) becomes a man by being outward bound, an adventurer, an explorer; and where millions are eager to hear these heroes’ tales of peril on the seas, on the ice.

About this title

Product Description:

This mint, First Edition HARDBACK, 1st printing, Flamingo, London, 1999, has a mint unclipped dust jacket that is now protected in an extra, bespoke, clear acid-free slipcover. The cover is black cloth with gilt lettering to the spine. The endpapers are a map showing the land and islands around Baffin Bay. There are some small engravings scattered in the text, some from G. HartwigÕs THE POLAR AND TROPICAL WORLDS. The book size is 5.75Ó w x 8.75Ó h with 397 pages. ISBN 0-00-225793-9.

Review:

Things were different, then: when Erasmus Darwin Wells set off for the arctic in May of 1855, he and his companions went off into the unknown. Then, the world was not charted as it is today: vast white spaces of ice were still vast white spaces on maps.

Andrea Barrett's remarkable fourth novel, The Voyage of the Narwhal, follows Erasmus on his journey of discovery--a journey that takes place both within and without him. This is a tale of adventure, but of a very uncommon kind. Barrett, a scientist who has turned her acute mind to the more fluid demands of fiction, has created in Erasmus an uncertain traveller. He is already 40 and afraid he has wasted his life: the men he sails alongside, including the expedition's dashing and reckless commander, Zeke Voorhees, are his juniors. Perhaps Wells has been moved to venture north to shadow the impulsive Zeke, a childhood companion who takes with him the heedless love of Erasmus's sister, Lavinia. Danger, romance, distance, loss: in some ways, Andrea Barrett's novel is old fashioned, an epithet she would probably relish. Yet in setting her book 150 years ago, Barrett has managed to shed a clear white light on present day dilemmas, such as the exploitation of the wilderness and that of native peoples. She provides no easy answers, but the questions she poses continue to fascinate long after the reader has closed her majestic book. --Erica Wagner

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0002257939
• ISBN 13: 9780002257930
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304