What a gift for phrasing this author holds.
“A dart tipped with pleasure and feathered with pain passed through me.”

“How could I … become blind? What trajectory intended for me, determined by me, could include the subtracting of sight from the sense of me?”

“And I thought I would not tell… Though it left me a liar, it left me having placed a higher value on Charlotte’s happiness than on my own clean conscience. But was it not arrogance in me that made me think I knew best in the matter, that my hand at the stopcock had the wisdom to regulate the flow of truth?”

But – that’s it, the one thing I liked – the author’s writing, especially her well-drawn settings of Nantucket and Kentucky. But, four things I disliked:

The story.
From the premise, the story of Captain Ahab’s wife, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the book. But once commenced, couldn’t wait for it to finish. It was simply ludicrous to think of one character hopping from catastrophe to disparate catastrophe, over and again, as the author has Mrs. Ahab doing.

Characterization.
Nah. Didn’t buy the thoughts or motivations of a one of ‘em.

Overt research.
Obviously much research went in, for the seepage back out at the reader, throughout the book, was nauseating.

Tirades.
The strident diatribes on every cause du jour throughout history. Pacifism, women’s rights, suffrage, gender equality, abolition, feminism, humanism, etc., etc., etc. Just pick one and wrap a story around it; a story true to its times. Don’t keep hitting us over the head with your holier-than-thou club.

Hated it. With a purple passion. ( )

Fantastic book! ( )

This book seems daunting when you first look at it, but once you begin reading, it is a compelling story. It begins with Una as a little girl and her journey from Kentucky to Nantucket where her mother sends her to live with her aunt and where she meets two young men who change her life forever.

Captain Ahab shows up about half way through the book and is not around for very long but Una's and his bond is felt through the rest of the book. It is written in rich detail, lyrical in its descriptions of life at sea, though it does depict certain horrors and their effects on Una and her life. ( )

http://thebookwormslibrary.com/?p=274... ( )

A beautifully crafted novel telling the story of Captain Ahab's wife, Una. Although I do not usually gravitate toward historical fiction, this book had me hooked from the beginning. It is a timeless tale of women and their struggles which, although rather long in scope, read like a much shorter book. I was enthralled from the beginning and highly recommend it. ( )