Close this alert
The Voyage of the Narwhal
Current price:
$17.80
Publication Date: September 5th, 2023
Publisher:
W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN:
9781324065975
Pages:
432
Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days
Description
"A glistening narrative, crammed full of rich, pictorial description and tingling suspense." —Michiko Kakutani, New York Times Book Review
An intoxicating story of the thrills of exploration, the fallacy of discovery, and the inevitable costs of ambition from the "genius enchantress" (Karen Russell) author of Ship Fever, winner of the National Book Award.
The Narwhal has a simple mission: to find the remains—human and material—of a disappeared ship. But its rash and obsessive young commander, Zeke Voorhees, has ulterior motives that may spell doom for the Narwhal and its crew. His soon-to-be brother-in-law, scholar-naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells, may be the only one aboard who can alter their fate. Back in Philadelphia, the women left behind make journeys of the imagination as they await the Narwhal’s return. Wielding her signature lyrical and precise style, Andrea Barrett unravels the mid-nineteenth-century American romance with the Arctic in a "genuine page turner that long lingers in the mind" (Philip Graham, Chicago Tribune).
Praise for The Voyage of the Narwhal
This novel takes off over the sea, straight out of history and into tragedy…We get to luxuriate in the promise of retribution and in finely calibrated, persuasive prose.
— The New Yorker
[Andrea] Barrett’s marvelous achievement is to have reimagined so graphically that cusp of time when Victorian certainty began to question whether it could encompass the world with its outward-bound enthusiasm alone—when it started to glimpse the dark ballast beneath the iceberg’s dazzling tip.
— Annette Koback - New York Times
A wonderful book in the truest sense of the word—wonder-filled
— USA Today
A luminous work of historical fiction that explores the far reaches of the Arctic and of men’s souls…The novel is an excellent demonstration of Barrett’s exceedingly fine and thorough hand at blending historical and natural detail with life-shaping conflict.
— Robin Vidimos - Denver Post
Breathes with a contemporary urgency, an exhilarating adventure novel.
— Philip Graham - Chicago Tribune
Breathtaking…exquisitely written in every way…fully worthy of the massive, dangerous subject it undertakes.
— Cleveland Plain Dealer
Both cunningly cerebral and hair-raisingly visceral…This is an astonishingly good book by a writer we must declare as major.
— Newsday
Stunning…Barrett shows the arrogance and delusion that drove the age of exploration better than any nonfiction book could.
— Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Times
A meditation on the nature of adventure and the scientific mind…[W]ritten in the spirit…of a 19th century novel—solid, unhurried, reflective and totally wedded to plot…Voyage of the Narwhal is [Barrett’s] own creation, marvelously imagined and beautifully told. A first-rate novel.
— Peter Kurth - Salon
Barrett delivers a stunning novel in which a meticulous grasp of historical and natural detail, insight into character and pulse-pounding action are integrated into a dramatic adventure story with deep moral resonance…The denouement, when it arrives, is a triumph: a confluence of justice, retribution, spiritual faith, metamorphosis and love.
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
[An] impeccably researched and stunningly written tale…The intellectual range exhibited by this magnificent novel places its author in the rarefied company of great contemporary encyclopedic writers like Pynchon, Gaddis, and Harry Mulisch.
— Kirkus Reviews
