I wish I could say I loved Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, but frankly I didn't get into it.

It's the story of sixteen year old Arthur Gordon Pym (told by himself at an older age) from a wealthy family in Nantucket who is desperato to travel on a whaler in search for adventure. When his family won't allow this, he smuggles himself onboard as a stowaway. He's delirious and nearly dying from thirst before he can escape from his hiding place, only to find out that some sailors mutinied and threw most of the crew overboard. Fearing his death from the hand of the murderous mutineers, he helps his friend to overthrow them. But there's no time to enjoy their victory: they are shipwrecked in a gigantic storm and drift helplessly through the Atlantic, always hoping for rescue.

So, you can see that the first half of the book is really action-packed. Our hero is thrown into various extreme situations; one climax follows the other without any breathing space letting the narrator experience a wide range of extreme emotions - enthusiasm, overconfidence, mortal fear, elation, abhorrence, resignation, you name it. His emotional curves are like the waves in the omnipresent ocean: on every moment of joy or elation follows a setback plunging him into the depths of despair.

And this is why the book wasn't for me - this roller-coaster of emotions taxed my patience. A sequence of desasters always feels to me a little bit boring (I hardly dare say this about the work of a genius like Poe).

The story is also accompanied by Poe's trademark hints of the unexplainable or supernatural. Cleverly alluded to, they never quite manifest but always remain possible. This element gets stronger in the second half of the novel. Pym and his companion have been rescued by a Polar explorer and are taken along on his expedition to the (not yet discovered) South Pole. The Antarctic was a true terra incognita at the time Poe wrote this book which leaves him a lot of room for fantastic yet in the context of his time credible assertions.

The end is utterly baffling in that it doesn't really provide a conclusion leaving the reader to his or her own speculations. ( )