The Night Ship

This novel alternates between the stories of two children: a 17th century Dutch girl on a sea voyage aboard the Batavia to live with her father after her mother's death, and a boy in 1989 who, after the death of his own mother, has been sent to live with his grandfather in a tiny fishing settlement on a remote island... an island that also hosts divers and scientists investigating the wreck of the Batavia and the terrible events that happened afterward.

The two youngsters, despite their shared tragedies, are very different people in different situations, but their stories parallel, echo, and reflect each other in all kinds of ways, large and small, as they face supernatural monsters that may be imaginary and human monsters who are show more entirely too real. In the hands of a lesser writer, this could feel artificial and contrived, but Jess Kidd weaves them together in a deft and magical way that grabbed me in ways I don't even entirely understand but that were beautiful and a bit heartbreaking. show less

"The dead can't hurt you, Gil. It's the living you need to watch for."

I don't give out stars easily - but this one earned every one of them! I was mesmerized right from the beginning. There are 2 stories here. The first is Mayken, in 1628 she's recenlty orphaned and being loaded on the boat Batavia, bound to live with her rich father she doesn't know. She is sent with her older nursemaid, Imke. Mayken is not excited to land (and live with her father) but is excited for her adventure on the sea. She's a girl that grows on you the longer you know her.

The second one (and the one that truly stole my heart) is Gil in 1989. He's also a recently orphaned boy who has been shipped off to an island to live with a Grandpa he doesn't know. He's show more beautifully different and doesn't fit in to this island or with his Grandpa well. There's just so much he doesn't know on this little island.

It will take just a few chapters before it will be clear how these two stories go together. It skips back and forth, every other chapter to each child, and each one is dealing with so many different challenges about the world and life. To get to the end and read the author's note to know this is actually based on a real ship, a real set of people and real circumstances. It's mind blowing and I love it! I will read this again.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book. show less

The Night Ship by Jess Kidd is an historical fiction novel about the Batavia. Nine year old girl Mayken is aboard the flagship Batavia, built by the Dutch East India Company in Amsterdam in 1628. The ship is on her maiden voyage to Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies in what we now call Jakarta, Indonesia.

The Batavia was an impressive ship carrying three hundred passengers and in a 10 year project starting in 1985, a full size replica of the ship was built using the same materials and methods employed in the early 17th century. Similar to the Titanic, it's heartbreaking to know that the Batavia sunk on her first voyage.

Steward Jan Pelgrom (a character based on a real person on the voyage) tells our protagonist Mayken more show more about the ship and about what happens in the belly of the ship or 'The Below World':

"First of all there's the gun deck. Where sailors bicker and curse, eat and sleep and the ship's barber lops off legs. Where the cook's galley gets hotter than Hell and the rats the cats can't catch grow big enough to steal babies. The orlop deck below that is for cows and soldiers. And below that, there's the hold." Page 13

Meanwhile, in 1989 we meet nine year old Gil, sent to stay with his Grandfather on a remote fishing village off the coast of Western Australia. Gil is struggling to fit in and understand his place in the world, while surrounded by fishermen and scientists searching for remains of the Batavia wreckage and fragments from the survivor's settlement that followed.

The island is remote and hostile and Gil is haunted by stories of a ghost girl.
"Gil has a watched sort of feeling. He reassures himself that his room is too small for any quantity of ghosts, unless they can overlap. But then the dead can't harm you; it's the living you should fear. The ghosts ought to make themselves useful and go out and haunt the veranda in case Roper returns." Page 93

I love Gil's sense of humour and applaud the writing style. Mayken is curious and friendly and makes many friends on the voyage. She likes to explore the ship when she can and here she is asking her favourite old sailor (Holdfast) if he has any stories:
"The old sailor obliges. He tells the sleepy child stories of cursed ports and blood-red roses, of the gunner's beautiful daughter, of love knots and promises. His words are snatched up and hauled away by the wind, which picks up as the ship ploughs on through the night." Page 157

While brief, this particular relationship between Mayken and Holdfast was incredibly touching and I also enjoyed the interactions between Mayken and the kitchen boy. However the journey continues on for months and the crew and passengers become restless as their health begins to suffer without fresh food.

"As is the way with souls confined, tempers fray and flare, ill-spoken words fester, coincidences become intrigues. Minds seethe with resentment and revenge like the worms in the water barrels.
As the ship spoils, so does the air between the people." Page 163

At one point, Mayken becomes justifiably emotional and the writer's expertise in making the reader feel every part of her anguish was clear on the page:
"She doesn't want to be calm. She wants to tear the ship apart, rivet by rivet, bolt by bolt, drag the caulking out with her teeth, lever up the boards with her fingernails. She wants to swing off the shrouds screaming and rend the main sail. Instead, she sleeps." Page 196

If you know your history - and even if you don't - you soon discover that the Batavia is going to come to grief off the coast of Australia and I REALLY didn't want to read about what happened afterwards. Approximately 40 people drowned in the wreck, but the rest were able to swim, float or paddle ashore. Worried a rescue wouldn't arrive in time, a savage fight over rations and scrabble for power amongst the survivors led to the cold blooded murder of many men, women and children in a series of atrocities. This made for hard reading, but these scenes were interspersed with some lighter moments with Gil which carried me through.

Gil isn't shipwrecked but he's facing his own hardship as he comes of age with a Grandfather who seems emotionally unavailable but trying to do his best. In fact it reminded me of Sam and Vic's relationship in Honeybee by Craig Silvey.

I loved Gil's thoughts on karma:
"Good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people; that is the law of karma. Good deeds get rewarded and bad acts get punished. Help someone out, you'll win the lottery. Steal from a shop, a bird will shit on your head. Sometimes you'll get bad karma for something you don't do, like not helping an old lady who falls down in the road. In a few days, a month, or a year, a hole will appear in your pocket and your wallet will fall through it. That's karma." Page 259

Love it! Gil is so endearing and his thoughts and observations often made me smile. I especially loved the scenes featuring his pet tortoise and the link that connected Gil to Mayken was a nice touch.

The Night Ship by Jess Kidd reminded me of Devotion by Hannah Kent and The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews, so if you enjoyed either of those historical fiction novels, you'll enjoy this one too. The writing for both narratives and time periods in The Night Ship was seamless and moving. In the past I reviewed The Hoarder and Things in Jars by Jess Kidd, but didn't quite reach the lofty heights of a five star review. I think this time she has earned that additional star. Highly recommended!

* Copy courtesy of Penguin Random House Australia * show less

(I'm befuddled by the other reviews and tags shown for Jess Kidd's "The Night Ship" -- they have nothing to do with the book I just completed and seem to be for a far different title by a completely different author. Methinks there is a flaw under the Librarything hood. The ISBN matches Jess Kidd's book; it has nothing to do with Jack Carr's "In The Blood.")

"The Night Ship," focusing on a young girl sent to join her merchant father upon the death of her mother, recounts the journey of the Dutch East India ship 'Batavia' from the Netherlands to the Dutch colony of Batavia (present day Java in Indonesia) in 1629. Parallel to that historical event, Kidd interweaves a more contemporary story of a young boy sent to live with his grandfather, show more a fisherman living on a small island near where the 'Batavia' foundered.

The young girl, Mayken, is curious, adventurous, creative, caring, and bold; the young boy, Gil, is shy, perhaps queer or trans or both, reticent, quiet, caring, and yet curious, especially about the history of the 'Batavia.' A shared hag stone (witch stone, adder stone) provides a tenuous link between the two. Both suffer insular and challenging communities -- the closed and strictly hierarchical community of the 'Batavia' and the isolated and hardscrabble community of the island. The tensions and human brutality in both communities slowly build over the course of the novel and come to open conflict with a rush over the last quarter of the novel. I found myself spending more time researching the horrific story of the historical voyage of the 'Batavia' as I did reading this fictionalization.

This is a very different story and structure from Kidd's previous novels. Her previous novels were firmly rooted in her Irishness; this is a bold departure that shows Kidd's versatility and development as an author. It's brilliant. show less

Jess Kidd has chosen write about one of the most disturbing and horrific maritime disasters in history. In 1628 the Dutch Indies Company ship Batavia set sail from Haarlem for Batavia in Jakarta. It met disaster off the coast of Australia; survivors made their way to a desert island on the reef. The two leaders of the expedition had a long standing feud, and a mutiny had already been brewing. Instead of working together to survive, the group continued the battle for control. With limited food and water, the soldiers were sent to another island to look for water. A dictatorship arose. Women were made sex slaves, and women and children were massacred as supplies ran out. When help finally arrived, a third of the survivors had died. A show more trial condemned the mutineers and they were hung.

Kidd tells the story through two children, Young Mayken who is on the Batavia, traveling with her nurse to join her father working half way across the world for the Dutch Indies Company. And in 1989, the orphan Gil, who arrives on the island to live with his grandfather.

Mayken is an independent, fearless child who would prefer to be a sailor than a pampered, rich girl. The story of her journey and how the ship crashed on rocks and how the survivors declined in to savagery is stark and disturbing. The challenges and discomfort of sea travel, the dark and damp below decks where soldiers are quartered, the rough men who run the ship are described in vivid detail. Mayken hears of the Bullebak, an eel like monster, and is convinced it has bit her nurse whose toe is red and swollen and putrid, and she seeks to capture the evil spirit. Dressing in a boy’s clothes, she descends into the dark hold of the ship.

In 1989, the orphan Gil has been sent to live with his grandfather, a fisherman on Beacon Island, a “lick of coral rubble.” He and his mother were alone in the world, and when she died, he was unable to accept it. He becomes obsessed with the Batavia and the legend of the lost girl who haunts the island. He is given a tortoise named Enkidu, and as Gilgamesh loved Enkidu in the Babylonian epic, so Gil loves the tortoise. Gil’s grandfather has an enemy who targets Gil and whose children bully him. Gil is revealed to find solace in dressing in his deceased grandmother’s clothing. The enmity between the two families rises to threaten lives.

I found both timelines to be interesting and atmospheric. Gil and Mayken are both ‘weird’ in not fitting into expectations, Gil dressing as a girl and Mayken donning boy’s clothing to adventure into the world of the sailors. And both story lines explore how a divided society breaks down when resources are limited, and violence is visited on the weakest.

Mayken is brave up to the end of her life. Gil finds justice and acceptance. It isn’t an uplifting tale, but a reminder of how power and greed and division are most felt by the weakest in society–our children.

I received an ARC from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

Two orphans, a girl and a boy, separated by 360 years, are marooned on the same island off the coast of Australia in Jess Kidd's beautiful 2022 novel “The Night Ship.” And when I call it beautiful, I refer not just to the story she tells but also to the clothbound book itself. Publishers don't always give such artistic attention to novels, but Atria did so here with the cover design and the inside art. The pages are even a physical pleasure to turn.

As for the story, Mayken is aboard the Batavia bound from Holland to the Dutch Indies in 1629 in the company of her nursemaid, Imke. But while Imke sleeps at night, Mayken loves to explore the ship, even breaking all rules, disguised as a boy, to roam below decks in search of a monster show more she believes to be hiding there. Through her wanderings she meets a variety of men and women aboard the ship, many of whom will later help her and others who turn out to be worse than any imagined monster.

The Batavia wrecks, with most of the passengers finding their way to a small island with no fresh water and little food other than what can be salvaged from the ship. The novel turns into The Lord of the Flies revisited as men divide and seek to conquer the limited resources, women included.

In 1989, the death of his mother sends young Gil to this same island, where his grandfather, Joss, is a fisherman at odds with most of the other fishermen on the island. Gil is described as weird, and some of his actions deserve that adjective. Like Mayken so many years before him, he becomes targeted, especially after other boys come to the island to summer with their fathers.

Meanwhile scientists on the island dig for artifacts to try to determine exactly what happened to the Batavia and its passengers. Much of this story is based on historical events.

Kidd takes us back and forth in time to tell two stories that gradually become one. show less

I believe Jess Kidd's books just keep getting better and better. They are always really solid plots with the most interesting characters, and this one was no different, plus with this one the pacing was perfect. This one had dual timelines but what I found most fascinating was the mirroring of characters in each timeline, both felt almost Shakespearean in execution and peek into human nature and group dynamics. Probably my favorite read of the year! I must add a TW for animal abuse which was a bit tricky to skip over.
My thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for allowing me to read an advanced copy and provide my honest opinion.