This book is "Moby-Dick" decades before "Moby-Dick." What begins as a jaunty sea adventure tale takes a turn for a somewhat more frightening struggle at sea. Interspersed are descriptions of maritime history, the geography of islands, flora and fauna, and other over-the-top detailed "true" accounts which are not always accurate. As the novel progresses, it gets less and less realistic despite these pseudo-realistic, pseudo-scientific soliloquies. Eventually, the novel descends to a point of senselessness, fantastic beyond reason, symbolically deep beyond comprehension, and confusing beyond serious analysis. And that's the point, folks. Sometimes life doesn't have a happy ending, nor does it end successfully wrapped up with a cute bow tied on top. "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" is a fun, confusing, hectic, strange book of unrecognized genius.

One comment on here notes it wasn't very scary. I'd note that this book was not meant to be in the horror genre. ( )

Required reading for my Adolescent Lit class, the only novella published by Poe. It was epically disappointing. Nowhere near as scary with many plot lines left untied. Plus you get promised "exciting cannibalism," which winds up being very disappointing and not scary at all. I don't think anybody in my class liked this book, and it was a large class. ( )

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Poe's first and only novel. It is notoriously uneven and difficult to classify, but can generally be described as an endless adventure story of one episodic adventure after the next with no definitive ending. Poe is at his classic best in the middle portion describing the macabre adventures on-board the ship Grampus. The later half is a rush job, Poe copied entire sections from other books word for word and the plot has a weak ending. Later commentators have defended the ending by pointing out Poe imagined what the South Pole was like before anyone had been there, but Poe's vision is hardly convincing, even for contemporaries. Putnam, who published it without reading to the end - on the strength of the first and middle section - vowed never to publish another work again without reading it fully. It was generally panned by contemporary critics.

Narrative does have strengths, the macabre style he is so famous for can be seen in full development (his first big classic The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) was only a year away). On the other hand Poe's imagination seems to get away from him, he is unable to sustain a long narrative without it shattering into separate short stories. He was at his best working from start to end in manic bursts of creative energy. Whatever the critical reviews, Narrative is popular today, if for no other reason it is Poe's only (complete) novel. The descriptions of being buried alive in the Grampus, the ghost ship and the story of cannibalism with Richard Parker are well told and unforgettable.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd ( )

Poe never ceases to fascinate. His only novel starts like a realistic narrative of life at sea, then turns into a horrific story of survival, and then morphs into a fantasy about aboriginal island tribes and an imaginary trip to a completely-divorced-from-reality version of the south pole. Quite different from the short stories and poems by which he is known, but still an intriguing read. ( )

It's a decent book. The story is interesting and moves at a good speed, except when different types of boats are being described. The end is very unsatisfying. ( )

To be perfectly honest, I had only read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket in anticipation of reading Jules Verne's sequel, An Antarctic Mystery, as I had never had any special interest in reading Edgar Allan Poe's work. However, I was singularly impressed by what Verne himself had referred to as Poe's "observations of the unhealthy faculties of Mankind." This story of survival, which frequently extends itself into the unreal, is firmly grounded by the striking humanity of the voice through which each experience is narrated. ( )

Wonderful ( )