The Voyage of the Narwhal

Summary: Erasmus Wells always wanted to be an explorer and naturalist, but his first experience with a collecting expedition in which the captain claimed credit for all of Erasmus's work has left him somewhat bitter. But now he's offered the chance to go on another expedition - to the Arctic this time - ostensibly to look for signs of a previous polar expedition that had disappeared without a trace the year before. It's being captained by Zeke, a young man raised in the Wells family, sweetheart to Erasmus's sister, and with a fierce drive to make a name for himself. This drive leads to tensions between the members of the expedition party and the crew of the Narwhal, the ship they've hired to take them to the far reaches of the North. show more And then when a disastrous decision means that the crew must overwinter in the Arctic, trapped in the ice throughout the endless night, Erasmus must face where his loyalties and his principles truly lie.

Review: I found this book really interesting, and very well written, but not exactly enjoyable. It (like Andrea Barrett's other books) was chock-full of the history of science. Erasmus and the Narwhal were fictional, but many other aspects of the story were not, and the Narwhal felt like a vivid and realistic representation of something that could have happened. Similarly, the characters were discussing and debating many of the scientific theories of the day, in such a way as to really give the reader a feeling for what the general zeitgeist of the time was. The details about the daily life of the expedition Barrett provided were excellent, and woven into the fabric of the story in such a way as to build the world of the Narwhal and its trials (and the world of the Philidelphia society they were coming from) up around me. This was done so effectively that it actually made me claustrophobic at times, particularly during the portion of the book where the Narwhal is stuck in the ice. This was probably made worse by the fact that I was reading the audiobook - I typically find audiobooks more immersive than print, and so there were times I would have to turn it off, shake myself, and remind myself that it was in the 80s and sunny outside, and that I was in no imminent danger of going insane while slowly freezing to death. (So while that was a point in favor of the audiobook, in general, this is one book where I'd recommend reading the print version. I found the narrator's pace of speaking to be intolerably slow - thank goodness for Audible's 1.25x speed button!) Barrett's writing was also really lovely, and felt believably authentic, its tone well-matched to the period.

However, while I was interested and engaged by the book, it's hard to say that I really enjoyed the experience of reading it, and that's down entirely to a lack of truly likable characters (some of the secondary characters - Ned Kind, and Dr. Boorhave, and Alexandra - were generally likable, but it wasn't enough to salvage things). Zeke drove me crazy - I don't think I've ever rooted harder for a mutiny to happen - and while Erasmus was mostly sympathetic, he was too waffly and hand-wringing for my tastes, especially when it came to matters involving Zeke. I suppose if he'd grown a spine sooner, it would have been a much shorter book, but ARGH! This book did make for an interesting book club, with lots of fodder for discussion about the attitudes of the time, and the nature of loyalty, and what Zeke's motivations were and whether we thought those were believable, and why Erasmus didn't just tip Zeke over the side already and tell everyone that he'd been eaten by a polar bear. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: I like books about the history of science and the history of exploration, so this novel was straight up my alley. If you also like those things, I definitely think this is worth reading, even if it was a little crazy-making at times. show less

When Zeke came back my heart sank - there was just no good that could come from him and his way of stealing all the happiness in a room for himself. I slammed the book down and walked away, and it took me three days to sufficiently nerve myself for whatever was to come.

When Dr. Boerhaave died my heart broke for him and also for Erasmus, who was just beginning to see the beauty of having a dear friend. When Erasmus got the letter from one of the doctor's other friends, and that friend called the doctor by his first name, I felt Erasmus's sadness and shame that his priceless friendship apparently hadn't even made it out of stage 1. Who among us hasn't been crushed by the knowledge that someone is more important to us than we are to show more them.

When the author described how the doctor's drowned head had washed up on the cliff below the men's camp, and that they simply didn't look over, nor did they hear the wind whistling across the jawbone, I gasped. The way that she showed us something that could have been life-altering for Erasmus but wasn't, how she played with going past coincidence into far-fetchedness BUT DIDN'T, was brilliant.

Wonderful wonderful wonderful book. show less

Oddly, for a novel about an expedition turning into an adventure, the primary adventure in Andrea Barrett’s The Voyage of the Narwhal ends 140 pages before the book does. Also odd (though apt), Barrett begins with an excerpt from Levi-Strauss’s Triste Tropiques criticizing such expeditions as vehicles by which “platitudes and commonplaces…[are] miraculously transmuted into revelations” because the “author, instead of doing his plagiarizing at home, has supposedly sanctified it” by a corrupted version of some quest. With an advertisement like that, what reasons could induce us to read this story?

Good reasons, it turns out. For one, a clawing moral issue is pressed onto the one man among the ship’s officers whose show more conscience is worst prepared to feel right about whichever choice he is forced to make. And as central as the adventure is, the key elements are those arising from his decision. A voyage, we learn, is not over just because it ends.

Set in the years 1855–1858, the tale is filled with tremendous detail. In case you wished to know it, Barrett will share with you how to acquire a warble fly larva, and how to eat it. And while it is men’s ambitious enterprises that drive the story, it’s not limited to men and their ambitions. Barrett takes care to depict women’s confined frustrations. We witness the strangeness of the “Esquimaux” to the crew and the strangeness of the crew to Arctic natives. Underlying it all are issues of trust between people and between cultures and the need to remain skeptical when an offered narrative is just what we want to hear. Related themes bear on the question, when is a person become lost? The question occurs in many contexts: Loss of loyalty? Loss of place? Loss of public honor? Loss of self-respect? Loss of the love of people who know you or the good opinion of people who do not? Loss of faith? What can be salvaged from a path rewarded with such failures? From a life seen as failure?

Some of the plot developments are predictable. The pace is not tuned for excitement. But the villainy is complex enough, the characters changeable, surprises occur, and we are shown well how acclaim for heroism is influenced by the momentum of publicity machines. Above all, the Arctic and the voyaging are wonderfully rendered. Andrea Barrett’s achievement here is considerable, as is her resistance to the platitudes and corruptions of plagiarized sanctity and sanitized society. show less

This is the story of a fictional 1855 expedition to the Arctic to search for a missing explorer who disappeared 10-years before. An expedition that will cost the lives of several men and change forever the lives of the others with guilt, anger and horror. Another way it can be described is that it is a story of scientific self-gratification and sheer hard-headed ambition. For more than half of the story the author pulls off an amazing feat of weaving the plot into a beautiful narrative that is filled with such vivid descriptions that the reader feels they are a part of the crew. Add the well-done suspense and you can almost cut it with a knife. Only in the novel's final pages does drama give way to moral dilemmas. There are two "heroes" show more in this story: Erasmus Wells, a middle-aged naturalist who hopes to use the voyage of the Narwhal for his own vindication. A way to try and forget, or at least to come to terms, with his experience on an earlier trip to the Arctic. Then there is Zechariah Voorhees who hopes to gain glory and fame as the commander of the Narwhal expedition. Never were there two men so different. Erasmus is shy, and cautious; Zeke is charismatic and impulsive. Erasmus is still mourning the death of the woman he loved, and sees himself as a loner...while Zeke, who is confident of the devotion of Lavinia, Erasmus' sister, comes across as what "bodice ripper" novels would call a "charming rake". Erasmus has promised Lavinia that he would "keep an eye" on Zeke, and make sure that he returns home safely. You know that was a promise that never should have passed his lips, since by the time the Narwhal had reached the polar waters, icebergs and shifting pack ice, was only the start of their troubles. The sled dogs had died of a mysterious illness...and one of the crew had died of lockjaw. The crew is split into feuding and sides have been firmly drawn... and Zeke had grown increasingly moody. He was anything but content with the information he had collected from the local Eskimos concerning the missing explorer; and he is determined to push ahead to try to reach, what he believes, to be an open ice-free polar sea. The last few chapters of the story... the until now well constructed plot...suddenly gives way to an overwhelming number of contrived events that seemed more a script for a Hollywood movie than to this novel. In spite of that, the story is still deserving of the 4.5-star rating. The author did an incredible job of conveying to the reader the indecisive role that chance and luck play in people's lives, as well as the raw, unpredictable, and unforgiving power of nature. Combined they help to produce a powerful and gripping novel that adventure enthusiasts will find intriguing. show less

This may be considered a book of two halves - the voyage of the narwhal, and the return of its crew. Of these I much preferred the former - but then I have a taste for polar adventure. Books set in the confines of a crowded boat are always rich pickings for character driven narrative, conflict, violence and loss. Scientific discovery in the C19th is fertile territory for musings about our human nature, and for enumerating our outworn norms (phrenology anyone?) And there is much to describe of wonder and of horror. A largely fruitless scientific and exploratory voyage to discover what had occurred to John Franklin's ships turns full circle to become a voyage into the human heart and into the back country of the most civilised nation on show more the planet. show less

Talking grew difficult; their beards froze to their neckerchiefs and saliva sealed their lips. The wind tore tears from their eyes and froze their lids together.

Thus is the atmosphere in The Voyage of the Narwhal, an historical adventure novel by Andrea Barrett. It is set in the mid-nineteenth century; the Narwhal is a whaling ship that has been outfitted for an Arctic voyage. The mission is to find out what happened to the Franklin expedition, apparently lost some years before exploring the Arctic. It is a bit of a race, as other expeditions have also set out to find Franklin’s ship.

The Narwhal’s naturalist and the book’s main protagonist is Erasmus Darwin Wells. He is the voice of reason on the voyage, compared to the show more commander, Zechariah Voorhees (Zeke), who is young and daring and doesn’t give much thought to the consequences of his actions. He puts his crew at risk on a number of occasions. He is the commander only because his father funded the expedition and built the ship.

Though I haven’t read many adventure stories, there are some elements here one would naturally expect – daring, danger, hardships, near death experiences, an unhappy crew, an unreasonable commander, and so on. Barrett's brilliance lies in her descriptions of the atmosphere and settings:

...any acknowledgment of sickness made the men nervous. So did the darkness, and the daily task of scraping from bunks and bulkheads the frost that formed from their breath while they slept. It was disturbing, Erasmus thought, to watch the air that had lived inside their lungs turn into buckets of dirty ice. Tossing the shavings over the side, he felt as if he were discarding parts of himself.

Waiting at home for the return of the Narwhal are Lavinia – sister to Erasmus and fiancé of Zeke – and her companion during the men’s absence, Alexandra. We are privy to their lives as well. They set to work hand coloring plates for an entomology book Lavinia’s two other brothers are publishing. Lavinia uses the work to fill her time, but Alexandra takes to the work and begins drawing illustrations for another book. She is the strong independent one and introduces the theme of women’s rights and abilities into the story. She and her family are abolitionists.

This novel holds adventure, intrigue, mystery, and a bit of magical realism right alongside issues of human rights – treatment of and attitudes toward the indigenous people of the Arctic, the Esquimaux, are explored.

Highly recommended (unless you’re trying to keep warm in frigid temperatures!). show less

I loved reading this author’s short fiction about scientists in Ship Fever, when I found this online for little money I bought it. This novel is about a fictional naturalist with the great name Erasmus Darwin Wells going on an exploring ship to the Arctic a few years after Franklin disappeared. He travels with a boyhood friend, Zeke, with more ambition than sense. The trip, from the first seems doomed. They meet Inuit with trinkets from Franklin’s ship, just miss Kane (another Arctic explorer) by days, and have to winter in the Arctic. With the crew ready to mutiny Zeke goes off by himself, forcing Erasmus to get them home. The ship is iced in, they can’t get the specimens he’s been collecting and Zeke allowed Erasmus’ good show more friend the doctor to die. But Erasmus does get them home. This is great book, a novel of ideas, about what science and discovery is all about. show less