The Night Ship

 

Mayken listens to the nighttime noises of the ship. Nearest to her: Imke’s snores. Farther away: feasting in the Great Cabin, muffled roars and shouts. It’s the skipper’s night. And the constant rhythmic creak of the ship. It’s a plain, easy-sailing night. The night ship rocks everyone in her round wooden belly.

I find Jess Kidd’s writing incredibly engaging — the imaginative situations, the savoury characters, the plausibility of ghosts — and with The Night Ship, she brings her familiar sensibilities to bear on a fictionalised account of actual events. In 1629, the merchant ship The Batavia set sail for the Dutch East Indies (laden with riches, wealthy and poor passengers, and apparently, at least one monster), but never reached its destination. Foundering on a coral reef, the ship’s crew was able to ferry some two hundred souls to safety on nearby atolls; but between mutiny, mismanagement, megalomania, and murder, not many of those shipwrecked would live to tell their tale. In alternating storylines, Kidd tells the story of two children — a poor little rich girl who set sail on the fateful ship in the seventeenth century and a sad little boy who is brought to live with his fisherman Grandpa in 1989 — and beyond sharing time across the centuries on the same lonely spit of shingle and scrub, the experiences of these two children chime together in surprising and meaningful ways. Perhaps not quite as creatively dazzling as Kidd’s last (Things in Jars, which I simply adored), I was, nevertheless, more emotionally affected by The Night Ship (maybe because it’s about sad children, maybe because it is — at least in part — based on true and horrifying events) and I would give it 4.5 stars if I could but am happily rounding up. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

The child sails in a crowded boat to the end of the Zuyder Zee. Past the foreshores of shipyards and warehouses, past new stone houses and the occasional steeple, on this day of dull weather, persistent drizzle and sneaking cold. There are many layers to this child: undergarments, middle garments, and top garments. Mayken is made of pale skin and small white teeth and fine fair hair and linen and lace and wool and leather. There are treasures sewn into the seams of her clothing, small and valuable, like her.

Mayken van der Heuvel — who has recently lost her mother and is being sent across the world to the rich father she has never met; a great man, though perhaps not a nice man — is nine years old and considered a “fine lady”; to be treated with the respect of her station so long as she keeps to her place aft-the-mast. But being nine and out in the world for the first time, Mayken can’t help but explore belowdecks, where she makes friends with everyone from the kitchenboy to the barber-surgeon to an English soldier who tells her the legends of sea monsters. The stink and stars and superstitions of these sections were wondrously wrought.

The child sails in the carrier boat to Beacon Island. The boat left Geraldton at first light. Now, late morning, they are nearing their destination and sea and sky are dazzling blue. Gil is made of pale skin and red hair and thrifted clothes. His shoes, worn down on the outsides, lend an awkward camber to his walk. Old ladies like him, they think he’s old-fashioned. Truck drivers like him because he takes an interest in their rigs. Everyone else finds him weird.

Gil Hurley — who has recently lost his mother and is being sent to the middle of nowhere to live with the grandfather he’s rarely met; a gruff loner and unlikely guardian — is also nine years old; sensitive and undersized, Gil is warned to stick to his grandfather’s camp as the old man isn’t well-liked among the island’s small community. But being nine and on his own for the first time, Gil can’t help but gingerly explore his surroundings when the loud men are out at sea, and he makes tentative friends with a local woman, a scientist (who tells him stories of the famous Batavia shipwreck), and a friendly deckhand (who fills the boy in on local legends through story and song). Perhaps because it’s closer in time, Gil’s losses and struggles felt more tragic to me, and these sections tugged at my heart.

In each section, the children learn the tales of slippery shadow monsters — call it an enormous eel, Bunyip, the Bullebak — and I was repeatedly enchanted by stories that began like: There was once this village, just like any Dutch village, only unluckier. Vegetables grew spindly, the animals were sickly, and the people were ugly. Being nine, both Mayken and Gil absolutely believe in the possibility of supernatural monsters, but as the scientist in the 1980’s warns the boy:

“The greatest shame of humankind is the failure of the strong to protect the weak. We don’t need monsters, Gil, we are the monsters.”

There are many chimes and echoes between the children’s stories — which sometimes charmed me and sometimes felt a bit forced — but it did feel organic to witness the historical events in real time and then reconsider them through a modern child’s sensibilities:

Gil imagines the survivors. Everyday people who probably moaned about the weather and having to eat bony fish. Then they battered one another to death as the water ran out. In Birgit’s book there’s a picture of a skull with a piece knocked out. He was killed running away, they reckoned. If you listened to that skull, held it up to your ear like a seashell, you might hear the clashing of swords and gurgling, then three hundred and sixty years of nothing. Why wouldn’t the dead Dutch be pissed off when the fishermen arrived, and the scientists, stirring up their old bones, trying to tell their story?

Historical fiction overlaid with Jess Kidd’s knack for a spooky campfire tale; I lapped it all up.

The Cat's Table

The Cat's Table begins with an 11 year old boy being placed, unsupervised, on an immense ship going from Ceylon to England where he will meet his barely remembered mother and start a new life. Since Michael Ondaatje made this same trip at the same age, it begs the question: Just how autobiographical is this tale? From the book:

The three weeks of the sea journey, as I originally remembered it, were placid. It is only now, years later, having been prompted by my children to describe the voyage, that it becomes an adventure, when seen through their eyes, even something significant in a life. A rite of passage.

And an explanation from an interview with the author:

Well, what happened was a few years ago I was talking to my children, who have now grown up, and I said I was put on this ship and there was no parental guidance, nothing. And they were appalled. 

And I said, actually, it is appalling.

So I thought, my God, there's a wonderful story here, and I will just invent this adventure that takes place on this ship during that time. So even though I'm using a kind of an element of memoir or seeming autobiography, all the characters in the story and all the adventures in fact are fictional.

Well, that's too bad, because even though the fictional memoirist says that he only sees the voyage as an adventure through his children's eyes in retrospect, The Cat's Table is packed with intrigue and hijinks and I enjoyed the idea of the boy and his two new companions -- bursting all over the place like freed mercury -- spying on the predawn Australian roller skater, aiding the robber Baron, solving the mystery of the prisoner in chains, and in my favourite scene, lashing themselves to the deck as a huge storm approaches:

With each wave it sounded as if the ship was breaking apart, and with each wave the wash covered us until we were tilted upright again. We were aware of a constant rhythm. Whenever the ship ploughed into the oncoming sea, we were swept around within the surf, unbreathing, while the stern rose in the air, the propellers out of their element screaming till they fell back down into the sea, and we on the bow leapt up again, unnaturally.

This is a placid journey? Even when the three boys weren't living up to their pledge (Each day we had to do at least one thing that was forbidden), they were gaining an invaluable education from the Dickensian adults who shared their company in the dining room at the Cat's Table -- the table furthest from the Captain's, and therefore the one with the least prestige -- and by being nearly invisible to these adults, the boys had a front row seat to their mysterious grown up ways.

The writing in The Cat's Table is gorgeous and lyrical, making the quiet moments as interesting as the audacious ones:

There was darkness all around us but we knew how to walk through it. We slid silently into the swimming pool, relit our twigs, and floated on our backs. Silent as corpses we looked at the stars. We felt we were swimming in the sea, rather than a walled-in pool in the middle of the ocean .

And the scene describing going through the Suez Canal at night was beautiful and mysterious:

We were not active, but a constantly changing world slid past our ship, the darkness various and full of suggestion… I could not tell whether everything taking place was carefully legal or a frenzy of criminality, for only a few officials oversaw what was going on, and all the deck lights were out and all activity was hushed.

Beyond an adventure tale, however, The Cat's Table is justifiably called a rite of passage novel, too, by the narrator in later years as he looks back on how the events and relationships on board the ship affected the man that he became. In fact, his friendship with the two boys he met at the Cat's Table -- Ramadhin and Cassius -- along with the time he spent with his lovely but troubled cousin, Emily, might be the most important relationships he was to ever forge, despite losing touch with all of them. 

As a curious aside, although it's called "The Cat's Table", there are many, many dogs in this book (33 references). Much is also made of hearts:

We all have an old knot in the heart we wish to untie.

I am someone who has a cold heart.

I once had a friend whose heart "moved" after a traumatic incident that he refused to recognize.

Ramadhin's heart…his unsafe heart…his tentative heart…the heart Ramadhin has protected all his life.

The knifing near to my left heart…I said left heart, for men have two. Two hearts. Two kidneys. Two ways of life.

I listened to an audiobook of this novel, which was narrated by the author. I see some people found his voice to be boring, complain that Ondaatje didn't put on obviously different voices for the different characters, but this to me was not a drawback: I found his level reading tone to be smooth and soothing, like listening to a seasoned storyteller at a campfire. His slight accent is also charming for this experience as it highlights the fact that he actually made this voyage.

What is interesting and important happens mostly in secret, in places where there is no power. Nothing much of lasting value ever happens at the head table, held together by a familiar rhetoric. Those who already have power continue to glide along the familiar rut they have made for themselves.

And as a last personal reflection tied to this last quote, this was a very interesting experience for me after having recently read The Ordeal Of Gilbert Pinfold. In that semi-autobiographical book, an Englishman embarks on the reverse trip, from England to Ceylon, in the same time period and on a similar ship (also formerly used by the British Navy during WWII). The biggest difference was, however, that being a famous writer, Gilbert Pinfold is seated at the Captain's Table where he does engage in "familiar rhetoric" with his powerful tablemates. Although Pinfold is dismissive of who he deems to be the low class Indians on his ship, and even though he was definitely not trying to make friends on his voyage, he just may have had a more enjoyable experience if he, too, had found his way to the Cat's Table.

Rage the Night

“I c-curse—I c-curse them greedy bastards,” he grits out. “I—I—” and with the curse still on his lips he slumps, his head rolling onto Roan’s shoulder. A horrid sound wrenches from Mose and a terrible pain fists itself from Roan’s belly up through his chest. He catches himself on a sob and is startled like a child who’s known only the pain of the flesh. He drops his forehead against that wildly thatched brow and his mouth trembles.

I’ve read and delighted in Donna Morrissey before, but still, I was happily surprised by how entranced I was by Rage the Night. Set a century ago across the Northern breadth of Newfoundland, and blending domestic drama and real-life historic tragedy, Morrissey delivers a heart-pounding, riveting tale of identity, survival, and finding one’s tribe. Centred on a decent young man who leaves behind everything’s he’s known — travelling through frigid snows by dog sled, decrepit sealing ship, and finally, by frozen foot — I couldn’t help but become incredibly invested in this one character’s survival (which was a neat literary trick to make me care about the [mostly faceless] scores of men involved in the historical event.) If I had a complaint: This character’s domestic mystery (the impetus for his journey) is pretty convoluted and drawn out and I was often unsure what was happening or if I had missed something along the way. Taking off half a star for that, but happily rounding up to five. (Note: I read an ARC and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

He is struck with the desire to beat the remaining snow from this cold grave, to shovel down through the earth until he reaches Frances Elizabeth and the little nest of bones upon her skeletal breast. Then all would be still, the spirits pummelled back into their graves and he restored to what he was before the old nurse spun out her confession.

Roan — raised in an orphanage on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula, but as a favourite of the local doctor, educated at a fine Boston boarding school — has learned, at twenty years old, details of his birth that send him immediately in search of some rumoured family in the colony’s faraway capital of St. John’s. Roan is an intelligent, damaged, big-hearted character, and as he makes his way through the long snowy stretches by dogsled, the people that he meets and helps along the way prove that he would make a good minister or doctor with further education, as his mentor back home had hoped. When he finally arrives in St John’s, Roan sees the men he’s searching for scrambling to make their berths on the sealing ship The Newfoundland, and although he has not done this work before, he’s able to secure his own berth and follows along, standing out awkwardly from his shipmates with his polished speech and well-made clothing. As Roan slowly becomes accepted by the men below-decks (a camaraderie he never knew as a backwoods orphan outcast at boarding school), and as he forces a few awkward conversations with the man he believes to hold the key to his origins, the real-life tragedy of The Newfoundland plays out: a heart-pounding tale of survival and brotherhood in the face of greedy Captains and cold-hearted nature. Between the relatable characters and the evocative nature writing, Morrissey has crafted a compelling story that critiques social imbalances that hold true today.

Uncle Jack sings, his voice starting to hoarsen, sounding rougher than an anchor dragging the ocean floor. “Abiiide with meee, ooooh, abiiiide with me.” The men sing with him: they sing to keep themselves going, they sing to banish the cries of the dying, they sing to banish their own fear of dying, they sing to banish the night and banish thoughts of their weakening legs and frozen fingers and hungry bellies, and their songs are their tears and their voices are as one and it is louder than the winds.

The best part of Rage the Night is witnessing the decent, yearning Roan find his tribe among the motley sealing crew (so many wonderful scenes with the distinctive, humorous Newfoundland accent and patter), and when the crew finds themselves in a harrowing survival situation, watching as they fight for one another; closer than any family. As I wrote above, the unravelling mystery of Roan’s origins was a bit too convoluted for my tastes, but I do appreciate how Morrissey used this as the catalyst, backstory, and plot propellor: it certainly did humanise the historic tragedy to follow along with this outsider as he learned the economic pressures that would send poor men to sea in such a dangerous industry. This book has so much heart — and simply incredible nature writing — and is exactly to my tastes. 

Mind Picking : Farewell 2022

 

I have a sense that this is how a blog dies: Looking back over the past year, I don't feel like I experienced much or accomplished much — I certainly didn't read as much as in previous years; the reviews for which is the ostensible reason for this writing space — and there's sadly not much that I did record of my life as 2022 ticked by. Today is actually a few days into the new year and Dave and I are taking a week at Sauble Beach — the picture above was taken yesterday at the halfway mark of a three hour walk — and while this is the first chance that I have bothered set aside to review the year that was, I want to embrace the spirit of that picture above (out exploring with my dog and my loving husband instead of feeling like a sorry bump on a log) and take that attitude into 2023. When I look back at 2019 — the 'Year of the Grand River' and the amazing local adventures we experienced — only attitude has really prevented us (me) from having another satisfying year like that; so here's to carrying that more spirited attitude forward! And so, to the overdue roundup of the events of 2022.

I told the long story of the renter-turned-squatter who turned our lakehouse into a flophouse for meth users as part of my Halloween post last year, so while I don't want to give that sorry human being any more of my head space, I will admit that working on getting her out took pretty much all of our attention for the first five months of 2022. And once she was gone (thank the spirits that watch over us; I'm not even kidding), getting the lakehouse back into shape took much time and effort heading into summer (but it's hard to regret spending most of June at Sauble, even if that is where Dave and I both eventually got hit with [mild] Covid). We also had the privilege of spending most of September at the lakehouse, after the summer renters had left, and we enjoyed wonderful sunny beach days and many good meals on the various patios; we were even able to have Thanksgiving at Sauble with Kennedy and Zach; we were delighted that Rudy and Dan took a week at the lakehouse with friends and that Kennedy could have a weekend with her girlfriends; sharing the space with friends and family is what it's all about.

At the beginning of October, Mallory felt much of her life was in crisis: Her employer announced that she would be closing her business (despite Mallory and a couple of coworkers spending months attempting to buy her out instead); her apartment situation was becoming untenable — dealing with rats, sewer backups, and a slumlord landlord, Mallory despaired that she couldn't even afford to move because rents are undeniably out of control — and to top it off, her car died. Dave and I discussed it and decided to offer Mallory — who claims she will never want a big white wedding — the same amount of money we will be spending on her sister's 'big' wedding in 2023 as a down payment on a home for herself, and by the end of October, Mallory had bought and taken possession of a one bedroom condo for herself; no parking, but no worries, because no car anymore. Now: the only way that Mallory could afford a place at all was because the condo was really dated and dirty, but after she held a Halloween party there — at which her friends were told to not even worry about spills on the already stained carpet — Dave and I spent every spare minute of November tearing that place down to the walls and fixing it back up again. (And I need to add: Kennedy was so worried about me burning out that she took time off work, and worked from the unfinished condo on more than one occasion, to make sure I had her physical help when I needed it. I guess I have moved into the age where my adult children start to think of me as frail, despite my self-image as strong. I am grateful for Kennedy's help and concern — I literally could not have done what I did without her — even if her ultimate concerns feel premature just yet.)

                                                                  

  

Mallory was able to get a new and better job right around the corner from her new home (that seems meant to be; she doesn't really even need a car anymore), and other than concerns for her figuring out where her education should go, we feel good that we were able to make her feel settled. Settled enough to decide to share her life and her home with her new kitty, Gonzo!

Those two big events (getting the renter out of the lakehouse and getting Mallory into a condo) feel, in retrospect, to be the only two things that happened in 2022, and as work got crazy busy for me leading up to and over Christmas, I'm left, at the end of the year, feeling like I didn't do much at all. I ended last year commenting that my book club didn't seem to have noticed that I had quit them, and indeed, I never did go back (and only one member ever reached out to ask me what was up; it was saddening, but ultimately unsurprising, to conclude that these were never really my friends). I grew less than enchanted with my boot camp buddies, too: Early in the year I read the book Cultish (about how American corporations — and especially those in the health and fitness industries — use the language of cults to reinforce loyalty to their brands), and although the book itself didn't make it to my best of 2022 lists (see below), it did seem to describe what feels false in my relationships at the gym. Also: I had planned to do the Mud Girl Run again this year (it was certainly fun when we did it as a group in 2019), but I was less enthusiastic when Rudy told me that she was planning a girls' weekend with Jenny and Debbie that would begin as soon as the run was over (these are her friends, even if they have included me in their plans a couple of times, but my nose was a bit out of joint thinking that I'd be driving myself there and back home alone so they could all travel together). So when I got Covid and couldn't go anyway, I just felt even more disconnected from the entire group, but also kind of relieved; these aren't really my friends, either. What a change from the happy, connected year I had in 2019. On the other hand, Kennedy started coming to the gym with me in November and that has been wonderful: nothing better than seeing that smiling face early every morning (and even the coaches have commented on the happy, energetic vibe she brings to the space; it's good to remember what ties really matter in the end.)

I guess I can still blame Covid for acting like a recluse this year — even though Dave resumed international travel for work wihout incident, we didn't go any further than the lakehouse together this year (not even down to Nova Scotia to see Mum and Dad, but I'm still bitter about Dad not coming to Kennedy's backyard wedding last year, so we'll see what will entice me to go back down there again) — but beyond enjoying some sunny patio dinners around home this year, I can only remember going out a total of three times: Kennedy and I went to Stratford in October to see Death and the King's Horseman (written about here), and we were unsurprised (maybe even relieved) that the audience wore masks throughout the performance.

Preshow dinner

The family took me out to dinner and a movie for my birthday (for some reason choosing the Christmas-themed dark comedy Violent Night, which was bad enough to make me laugh throughout, so, well chosen I guess, lol), and that was the first movie I've been to in forever. And later in December, Dave and I went to see Barenaked Ladies (for something like the tenth time?) for their Hometown Holidays show (fantastic time, as ever!).

And, as we do every year, we end with the holidays and the whole family coming over for a Christmas Eve get together. And although it is so much work — and particularly when it's in the middle of my exhaustion from a retail job — when my kids, separately, gave me a hug and thanked me for all I do to make Christmas special, it's all worth it and I will happily do it over and over again.

That's the year that was, and now, as in previous years, I present my top reads (because, again, this is the ostensible reason I am here) in no particular order.

                                                       Top Ten New Fiction

 The Colony

This would have been my pick for the Booker this year: between the powerful sentences and the overall message about the effects of colonialism, I simply loved it.

Liberation Day : Stories What can I say? George Saunders fires up my brain.  The Night Ship I love Jess Kidd's voice, always look forward to reading her books, and this one did not disappoint: sweet, sweet words telling a fascinating tale.   The Passenger      Stella Maris  I can't not include the two new Cormac McCarthys on this list: as I wrote in my reviews of these, they may not hang completely satisfactorily on their own as novels, but as a capstone to McCarthy's writing career, they feel destined to be classics. In contrast to the above established authors, I found so many new-to-me indie writers who moved me this year:  Immortal North Combining my favourite elements of a northern setting and relatable human drama, this certainly did reach my 'jaded heart'.  Compass Another tale from the Canadian north, everything about this worked for me.   Chouette Such a strange and moving tale of motherhood's unexpected challenges; loved every bit of it.  Motherthing As I wrote in my review, this is 'crisp and fizzy and so, so dark', and what's not to love about that?  One's Company From absurd to sublime, I think I was exactly the right audience for this retro feminist manifesto.                                  Top Ten Nonfiction Books Read in 2022 These can be grouped into the most interesting memoirs:    Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory    I'm Glad My Mom Died     Jennie's Boy: A Newfoundland Childhood My favourite social/hostorical commentary:  Butts: A Backstory   Laughing with the Trickster: On Sex, Death, and Accordions   Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks   Muppets in Moscow With honourable mentions in this category to: Which as You Know Means Violence; Hanged in Medicine Hat; Culture: The Story of Us; The Revolt Against Humanity; and This is Assisted Dying. My favourite literary commentary:   The Curse of the Marquis de Sade  Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne  The Jane Austen Remedy (This last was the impetus for me to finally read [probably reread? I know I picked up some Austen in my youth] Pride and Prejudice; The Colony [above] prompted me to read The Moon and Sixpence; and simply because it was available on NetGalley, I read The Easy Life; all wonderful classics and I hope to read more in the upcoming year.) Honourable mentions in this category: Six Walks; And a Dog Called Fig; and The Fairy Tellers.) Maybe it's not a total surprise that I seem more engaged with nonfiction —  I kind of feel like I've read all the possible permutations with fictional plots by now and it takes a weird angle to fire my brain with a novel — and  I should also note something rather extraordinary: The end of 2022 marks the end of my initial 'ten year project' ( to read and review a hundred books a year, and hopefully [it seemed like such a bold reach at the time!] to eventually be able to point at a thousand examples of what I thought of something.) So over the course of these past ten years, I have actually read and reviewed 1322 books (slightly more than that as I have reviewed a couple here that I didn't bother putting onto goodreads), and that is something I'm proud of; and especially as these reviews have made me feel like I have left a mark in the void. Okay, so obviously, this is not the death of this blog just yet. I reckon building on that review count will keep me engaged for a while yet. Not to mention that Dave and I are planning another big adventure this year, and I really need to remember how satisfying it was when we engaged in so many local adventures back in 2019, so I know there will be things to memorialise here, if only to aid my future memory. Also while on our walk yesterday, I sent this picture of a 'fairy ring of snow' to my girls from that halfway point. It enchanted me and I need to remember to keep my eyes open to enchantments. Here's to 2023: it will be what I make of it! (Why is that always so hard to remember year after year?)

McGlue

I get up. My head thwarts around and I see nothing, then I see stars. Saunders called Johnson dead, I think. I greet the cot again, blind. Saunders will come back with Johnson and have a laugh. Until then I’ll ride my cogitations out through the stabbing pains in my skull, the licking waves. Most likely I’ll doze then wake up to bread and butter and hot beans and whiskey and it’ll be night and we’ll be halfway to China and they’ll say, “Hit the well, McGlue,” like after my last bout. I try to remember the port of call I got this wet in.


First published in 2014 (when it won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose), McGlue was Ottessa Moshfegh's first release; and on the heels of her recent successes, this short novella is about to be re-released in 2019. All of the grit and debauch of Moshfegh's later novels are prefigured here, and as I tend to like transgressive fiction, for the most part, this worked for me. (I know I shouldn't quote from an ARC, but the language is the best part of this book, and since it's a re-release, I'll assume these bits are in their final forms.)

I call out, and my voice makes me ill to hear it. Get back down to the cot, McGlue. Yes, thank you. The stars come out. I look for the moon, but it eludes me. I can’t find or measure my way. Drift, drift. If I just close my eyes I’ll get there. 

I sleep some more.

Set mainly in 1851, McGlue – a boozy ship's hand – wakes up imprisoned in the hold of his ship, accused of murdering his only friend and benefactor, the slumming rich man, Johnson. As a chronic alcoholic, McGlue is more desperate to get himself a drink than to clear up the misunderstanding (what he assumes is a prank), and his condition is spelled out in short, muddled phrases that pull the reader into McGlue's confused immediacy. As he dries out and grasps for memories, we learn that McGlue has also suffered head injuries that not only make remembering difficult, but make him act like a bit of a madman:

The floor and ceiling switch places and the earth quakes. A moment later the guard comes down across my face fist-first: “Shut it!” he shouts into my ear. I quit screaming. I've been screaming.

McGlue is rich in historical detail – with stories from several exotic ports-of-call that McGlue and Johnson visited on the ship, to newspaper accounts of the anti-slavery movement, to a look at the 19th century American justice system – and for such a short work, it does a good job of filling in the background that led McGlue to become such a degraded character (raised in Salem, Massachusetts by an overworked single mother – a childhood steeped in poverty and tragedy – McGlue was six the first time he got drunk). McGlue was near freezing in a snowbank the first time the aristocratic Johnson spied the homeless teenager, and for reasons never quite adequately explained (but since we're always in the brain-damaged McGlue's head, maybe he doesn't know either), Johnson decides to become the boy's guardian and liquor supplier; eventually arranging for the two of them to set sail on a trading ship; Johnson always at the ready with a bottle in his pocket to bring McGlue back to life:

I wake up mornings with my head in a vice. The only solution is to drink again. That makes me almost jolly. It does wonders in the morning to take my mind off the pain and pressure. I can use my eyes after that first drink, I remember how to line up my feet and walk, loosen my jaw, tell someone to get out of my way.

The format of following along as McGlue sobers out in solitary confinement – first in the ship's hold and then in a Salem prison cell – allows for very organic character development; made more interesting by McGlue's brain damage that keeps vital information back from both the reader and himself. There are a few surprisingly tender moments that got to me, but more often, McGlue is recalling fleabitten flophouses, downmarket whorehouses, or trying to jam his fingers into the crack in his skull in order to pry out the memories. Having enjoyed her later novels, it was interesting to me to see where Moshfegh started, and I would imagine that McGlue would have the most interest to others familiar with her work. Four stars is a rounding up.

Also by Ottessa Moshfegh:

Eileen

My Year of Rest and Relaxation

The Worst Journey in the World

Antarctic exploration is seldom as bad as you imagine, seldom as bad as it sounds. But this journey had beggared our language: no words could express its horror.

Originally released in 1922, The Worst Journey in the World is a contemporaneous account of Captain Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13, as written by Apsley Cherry-Garrard: Scott's second youngest team member (twenty-four at the time of sailing) who would go on to serve England admirably in the First World War and spend the rest of his life suffering trauma, depression, and PTSD. Because this book was written during the peak days of polar exploration, Cherry-Garrard includes both thrilling adventure tales (in wry, evocative prose) and scientific data points (latitudes reached over how many miles, wind speeds, minimum temps and maximum drift), and while I much preferred the former to the latter, I appreciate that the author was writing for both the armchair adventurer and they who might be planning polar treks of their own; he could have written this no other way. I loved every minute of this long, dense read. (I should also note: My edition has a hundred pages of introductory information about Cherry-Garrard's life, not counted in the volume's 600 pages, and while I thoroughly appreciated the context this gave to me, it felt a bit frustrating to read for hours and not feel like I had started the actual book.)

I have seen Fuji, the most dainty and graceful of all mountains; and also Kinchinjunga: only Michael Angelo among men could have conceived such grandeur. But give me Erebus for my friend. Whoever made Erebus knew all the charm of horizontal lines, and the lines of Erebus are for the most part nearer the horizontal then the vertical. And so he is the most restful mountain in the world, and I was glad when I knew that our hut would lie at his feet. And always there floated from his crater the lazy banner of his cloud of steam.

There's so much I could recount about the details of this expedition (even the last leg of the sailing out from New Zealand – with ponies and dogs tied up on deck in harsh, high seas; the dogs washed overboard to the end of their chains and then swept back on the next wave – seems incredible before they ever set foot on the Antarctic continent), but the details are too numerous for a summary to do this tale justice; it must be read in whole. I will note that one of Cherry-Garrard's primary objectives seems to have been to humanize the five expedition members who lost their lives on the Polar Journey itself, and especially to confront and correct any criticism that Captain Scott had publicly suffered in the decade since he had lost his life. Describing the daily labours in camp or on sledge runs, Cherry-Garrard describes each man around him as a “brick”; hard-working and cheerful; every man capable of good humour and selflessness in the darkest times, open to friendly debates and singsongs and general bonhomie. Of Scott he writes:

He will go down to history as the Englishman who conquered the South Pole and who died as fine a death as any man has had the honour to die. His triumphs are many – but the Pole was not by any means the greatest of them. Surely the greatest was that by which he conquered his weaker self, and became the strong leader whom we went to follow and came to love.

And of the two men, Edward Wilson and Henry Bowers, who accompanied Cherry-Garrard on the Winter Journey (the actual “worst journey in the world” of the title), he writes:

In civilization men are taken at their own valuation because there are so many ways of concealment, and there is so little time, perhaps even so little understanding. Not so down South. These two men went through the Winter Journey and lived; later they went through the Polar Journey and died. They were gold, pure, shining, unalloyed. Words cannot express how good their companionship was.

And so to the Winter Journey: Wilson – the chief scientific officer of the expedition, who had accompanied Scott on his earlier quest for the South Pole (1901-04) – had discovered the Emperor Penguins' remote breeding grounds on that earlier expedition and believed that if they could secure some unhatched eggs (which are laid in the dead of winter), much could be learned about the evolution of early birds from reptiles. And so these three men, in the total darkness of a polar winter, in the unprecedentedly cold temperatures of −40 to −77.5 °F, pulled their sledge over unlevel ground and unseen crevasses, for a hundred kilometres in each direction. The cold, the wet, the frozen solid fur sleeping bags that would take an hour to squirm into each night (and which were so cold that one's back felt like it would break from night-long convulsive shivering), the exhausting march, the winds, the dangers – the entire tale is harrowing. In the end, they were able to make one brief trip to the rookery and brought back three unbroken eggs.

The horror of the nineteen days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be re-experienced to be appreciated; and any one would be a fool who went again: it is not possible to describe it. The weeks which followed them were comparative bliss, not because later our conditions were better – they were far worse – but because we were callous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the heroism of dying – they little know – it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on...

There is then a brief humourous interlude (made more pitiable and ironic by the knowledge that Wilson and Bowers eventually die on the Polar Journey) in which Cherry-Garrard describes the indifference with which the Chief Custodian of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington will accept his offering of Emperor Penguin eggs. (Indeed, Cherry-Garrard would return some time later with Captain Scott's sister to see these eggs and they were told that there was no record of their existence!) The eggs would eventually be recovered and studied, and according to Professor Cossar Ewart of Edinburgh University's report:

If the conclusions arrived at with the help of the Emperor Penguin embryos about the origin of feathers are justified, the worst journey in the world in the interest of science was not made in vain.

So, there's that. Near the end, Cherry-Garrard has some comments about the fact that Roald Amundsen's team beat Scott to the South Pole by five weeks. There's a hint of criticism about Amundsen's show of poor sportsmanship (apparently Amundsen had announced he was embarking on a trip to the North Pole but turned his ship at sea and sneakily reached Antarctica just ahead of Scott), and Cherry-Garrard stresses repeatedly that making a journey to the Pole was secondary to the scientific survey Scott's team was doing for the advancement of global knowledge, but still, it must have been galling for Scott to fight his way, man-hauling sledges, to reach the Pole and find Amundsen's and Norway's flags planted there. (There was also found there a letter written to the King of Norway with a note from Amundsen asking Scott to mail it for him: was this an ungentlemanly way of demanding that Scott prove he made it to the Pole while also publicly proving that Amundsen made it there first?) On the other hand, Cherry-Garrard writes that if one's sole objective is to make it to the Pole, all credit should be given to the new route that Amundsen discovered, and he also backhandedly praises Amundsen's use of some 250 dogs – surplus dogs brought along to feed the working dog teams – that meant Amundsen could swiftly and comfortably ride on a sled in each direction, never once doing the back-breaking sledge-hauling that Scott et al. engaged in (hard labour which, coupled with an inadequate diet, eventually killed them).

I was fascinated by this narrative and Cherry-Garrard's writing was consistently evocative and well-phrased. The tone was also often wry and gently humourous:

Dog-driving is the devil! Before I started, my language would not have shamed a Sunday School, and now – if it was not Sunday I would tell you more about it!

I loved the whole of it.

When Dave and I were in Israel back in January (recounted here), we were really impressed by the amount of travelling the others in our tour group had engaged in. It seems that most everyone there had been to Egypt and India, Paris and Tokyo, on African safaris and Mediterranean cruises. One couple - Sonja and Klaus - however, really seemed to have been everywhere. And during our first dinner together, Sonja told us the story of their trip to Antarctica.

Apparently, because Klaus only wanted to go if they could travel on a working tall ship (!), the couple had to wait four years for a private cabin to be available (this ship only had a handful of cabins and most people slept in a common bunkroom). Having a bit of privacy definitely sounds worth it, but the accommodations were hardly luxurious: the floor space was mostly taken up by the smallish double bed, and although they had a private washroom, Sonja said that the journey was so rocky that every time she sat on the toilet, her head would repeatedly bounce off the tank behind it, giving her a huge and tender goose egg, and although they did have a tiny shower, it wasn't used that much: they were always cold and wet, their clothes never dried, and trying to remain standing (while swaying dramatically back and forth) under a thin stream of warmish water was rarely worth the effort.

Because it was a working tall ship, everyone on board needed to take turns as watch on deck and learn to raise and lower sails in high winds and rocky seas. Sonja said that she was always cold, her hands were always pruny with wet, and because she was banged back and forth against the walls in the narrow gangways belowdecks, every one of her fingernails turned black before the end of her trip.

Of course she said that arriving at Antarctica was breathtaking and "so worth it", and one of the highlights was when they were told they would be landing on shore for a "spa day". Everyone was told to put on a bathing suit with appropriate layers on top, and after a thrilling ride from the ship aboard inflatable Zodiacs, they were deposited on a black pebble beach. As they looked around the deserted stretch of land, someone asked, "Where's the spa?" And the tour guide pointed down to the pebbles and said, "Dig." 

Now, you are apparently not permitted to bring anything like shovels onto the continent, so these tourists needed to dig down through the pebbles with their hands, but as Sonja soon discovered, there was a hot spring under the beach and she needn't dig down too far to have created a body-sized basin of deliciously warm water. She then showed us pictures of herself and others, wearing nothing but swimsuits, laying on the Antarctic beach with icebergs off the shore and white glaciers behind for as far as the eye could see. How cool is that?

After telling us her story and showing off the pictures, someone asked Sonja if she would ever do it again. Without a pause she said, "I would definitely go again, but not like that." 

I have long said that I would love to go to Antarctica, but I have neither the interest or the ability to haul a sledge towards the South Pole like Scott; and after hearing the story of Sonja's own worst journey on earth, I wouldn't be lining up to pay twelve grand (each!) to take a working tall ship there either. And now, in my days of self-isolation - entering my fourth week of only leaving the house for groceries - I marvel at the idea that I ever took world travel so for granted. Perhaps when things go back to normal - if they ever go back to "normal" - I should be more bold in pursuit of adventure.