Ian McGuire: The North Water

This is quite something. If you ready the opening chapter, you will know immediately if this book is for you. The prose has a visceral, sensual and sexual quality the recalls Suskind of Perfume at his most intense...and as with some of Anthony Burgess's novels, I came across a number of words I did not know

There is a strong parallel, I suspect ( not know as not read the book I'm about to reference) between this and Moby Dick...superficially in the setting but in I suspect other thematic ways as well.

The opening words ' Behold the man' to me echoed the opening of Moby D...but with the syllable count ( here 2 1 1 compared with 1 1 2) reversed which cleverly shows the way in which the monstrous Drax is at once the reverse and total opposite of any halfway decent human being and yet with the opening phrase connecting with the Leonardo image of the perfect man.

There is a mystery built into the story but that is a minor part of its appeal and while Drax may seem to be the focus, in fact it is the surgeon who is the true ' hero'

The evocation of the life of a whaler is stunning and fills one with awe At the astonishing suffering and brutality of life in that role...and in fact life generally. How did humans survive and live in such conditions. As with all aspects of this, the quality of the descriptive writing is stunning...exemplary in its brutal vividness .

This is a thrilling book and I must find and read his other work, a novel prior to this one.