![]() ![]() Probably unavoidable given the subject matter. ![]() They hunt seals for skins and blubber and oil, after one mass slaughter leaving the ice pack “as spattered and filthy as a butcher’s apron.” They kill polar bears also for the skins, the cubs to sell.Īll brutal stuff and McGuire doesn’t flinch at couching his story in most visceral language. They get in bar fights with the crews of other ships. And before the main whale hunt, the crew cuts a bloody swath across the landscape. As Baxter, the voyage’s financer explains to him why he will no longer support whaling: “We killed them all, Arthur…” ![]() Brownlee, the ship’s captain knows this will be his last expedition. The vast pods that once teemed amid the Arctic seas are no more. We learn that the whaling trade is played out. The building confrontation between Sumner and Drax in the frigid waters of the Arctic Circle powers the core of the novel. ![]() With a few exceptions, the crew is the usual assortment of seamen types: base, shambolic, drink-sodden, avaricious, and lazy. It’s the late 1850’s and the disgraced surgeon, Patrick Sumner, fresh from the Sepoy Rebellion, has signed on to the whaling vessel The Volunteer. The North Water by Ian McGuire (Henry Holt and Co, 2016) Here’s the latest in my very occasional series of 500-word book reviews. ![]()
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