Book Report: The North Water

34. Ian McGuire, The North Water (2016) (12/25/2020)

This is a dark, bleak book, replete with violence, and yet I found it strangely compelling. It concerns the dying days of the whaling trade out of Hull, England, and a final voyage of the not-so-good ship Volunteer in the late 1850s. In the first several chapters we meet the main characters: Drax, a harpooner and a thoroughly bad man—he kills a man and knocks out and rapes a boy within the first nine pages; Sumner, the ship's physician, a man with a checkered past in the army in India, where luck both saves him and betrays him; Brownlee, the ship's captain, known for having lost another ship and most of his crew—he's bad luck all round; and Baxter, the owner of the Volunteer, who probably doesn't believe in any such thing as luck. 

Early on we learn that there is a plot afoot to sink the ship high in the Arctic waters of Canada—for the insurance money. Indeed, we readers are made selectively privy to much information that the characters themselves are not necessarily aware of, which makes it not quite a book of suspense but more an exploration of persona. Though that said, the only real backstory we get is Sumner's. The other characters are rather shadowy figures, most of whom (we presume) simply want to make some money and get back home. 

There are brutal scenes in which the crew club baby seals; kill a polar bear mother and take her cub on board, to be sold (assuming it survives) at a zoo back in Europe; and of course catch, kill, and flense whales. A man dies by accident, a boy dies by murder. Violence is a way of life for these men.

Midway through the book, the second mate, Otto—a Swedenborgian, allowing for a bit of spiritual conversation as the story progresses—has a dream: a prophecy of sorts. In it, he learns that the entire crew of the Volunteer save Sumner will die, and Sumner himself "will be killed by a bear. . . . Eaten, swallowed up somehow." This comes to pass, more or less: though one other crew member survives—you can probably guess who—leading to a couple of final, pivotal interactions at the very end. I don't want to give too much away, but suffice to say, Sumner's luck stays with him. ("Killed" and "eaten" may turn out to be metaphorical?)

The descriptions and details in the book are thoroughly researched and beautifully told. McGuire has quite a way with the language, and I learned (or at least jotted down) many new words to me: quim, krang, crump, snickle, bonce, swarf, trew, gisant. His descriptions of landscapes, be it the hardscrabble waterfront of Hull, the vast whiteness of the far north, or the changing countryside of England, are vivid. He also manages to delve into hearts and minds. For example, here is Sumner ruminating in a pub (under the influence of a few drops of laudanum) before he boards the Volunteer:

Perhaps he is free, he thinks. . . . Perhaps that is the best way to understand his present state. After all that has beset him: betrayal, humiliation, poverty, disgrace; the death of his parents from typhus; the death of [his guardian] William Harper from the drink; the many efforts misdirected or abandoned; the many chances lost and plans gone awry. After all of that, all of it, he is still alive at least. The worst has happened—hasn't it?—yet he is still intact, still warm, still breathing. He is nothing now, admittedly (a surgeon on a Yorkshire whaling ship—what kind of reward is that for his long labors?) but to be nothing is also, looked at from a different angle, to be anything at all. Is that not the case? Not lost then, but at liberty? Free? And this fear he currently feels, this feeling of perpetual uncertainty, that must be—he decides—just a surprising symptom of his current unbounded state. . . . And what does free even mean? Such words are paper-thin, they crumble and tear under the slightest pressure. Only actions count, he things for the ten-thousandth time, only events. All the rest is vapor, fog. . . . It is a grave mistake to think too much, he reminds himself, a grave mistake. Life will not be puzzled out, or blathered into submission; it must be lived through, survived, in whatever fashion a man can manage.

This notion of "action" versus words or thoughts plays out again and again in the book. It ties in with the recurring theme of bears—of wildness, of pure physical being and instinct—as well. 

Surprisingly, for all the hard manliness of this book, I enjoyed it. It was an unusual read, a journey unto itself.

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Covid-19 stats for Monterey County today: 24,538 confirmed cases, 155 current hospitalizations, 185 deaths—up, respectively 2,055, 4, and 8 since last Friday; but the change since yesterday is 0, −10, 0, so there's that. 

Stay safe. Stay warm. Happy Christmas.