Ahab's Wife: Or, the Star-Gazer: A Novel

by Sena Jeter Naslund | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0688177859 Global Overview for this book
Registered by beachglass of Fresno, California USA on 9/2/2003
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by beachglass from Fresno, California USA on Tuesday, September 2, 2003
This is my favorite novel of 2003, so far. I absolutely loved the writing, and the story held my interest from the beginning. This is one of those novels that you read slowly, because you don't want to come to the end.
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'Una, named for the heroine of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene, flees to the New England coast from Kentucky to escape her father's puritanism and to pursue a more exalted life. She gets whaling out of her system early: going to sea at 16 disguised as a boy, Una has her ship sunk by her own monstrous whale, and survives a harrowing shipwreck:

I was so horrified by the whale's deliberate charge that I could not move. Then my own name flew up from below like a spear: "Una!" Giles' voice broke my trance, and I scrambled down the rigging. No sooner did my foot touch the deck than there was such a lurch that I fell to my face. I heard and felt the boards break below the waterline, the copper sheathing nothing but decorative foil. The whole ship shuddered. A death throe.
The ship dies, but Una returns to land to pursue the life of the mind. The novel's opening line--"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last"--also diminishes Melville's hero in the broader scheme of things. Naslund exposes the reader to the unsung, real-life heroes of Melville's world, including Margaret Fuller and her Boston salon, and Nantucket astronomer Maria Mitchell. There is a chance meeting with a veiled Nathaniel Hawthorne in the woods, and throughout the novel the story brims with references to the giants of literature: Shakespeare, Goethe, Coleridge, Keats, and Wordsworth. Although her novel runs long at nearly 700 pages, Naslund has created an imaginative, entertaining, and very impressive work."
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This is an extra copy available for trade...

Journal Entry 2 by beachglass from Fresno, California USA on Thursday, October 2, 2003
This book is going to fellow BC'er luv2sewjr...thanks for the trade! I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. :-)

Journal Entry 3 by luv2sewtjr from Greencastle, Pennsylvania USA on Wednesday, October 15, 2003
After reading a different book about whaling and Nantucket, I am anxious to read this book.

Thanks for the trade, beachglass!

Journal Entry 4 by luv2sewtjr at Greencastle, Pennsylvania USA on Saturday, March 24, 2012
My book club selected this recently and I tried to read this book and struggled mightily. I did not finish it, a rarity when it comes to my book club (I've belonged over 12 years and read almost all of them).

I do wonder if it is a book I should attempt again at a later date, when life has settled down and is less stressful. I have found that some books are better enjoyed the second time around...


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