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The adventures of Una Spenser who went to sea disguised as a cabin boy. Shipwrecked, she marries one of the survivors, then falls in love with Captain Ahab, a man obsessed with a white whale. She becomes involved in fighting slavery and in women's rights.
Too long, too full of rambling thoughts, especially on the part of the very self-centred main character. Too self-indulgent on the part of the author. And dreary. ( )
Sena Jeter Nauslund (how I would love to know the etymology of that name) has written a book worthy of its inspiration in Ahab’s Wife. Beautifully written, though some of the ponderings by Una (the wife) as she develops her spirituality remind me of the elven songs in Tolkien - long and wavering and tempting to skip. That said, this is an amazing life description of a girl who lived unafraid. Like Ahab, she thrusts herself in places, builds skills so she can handle life’s twists, strengthens herself against misfortune, opens herself to joy. Nausland describes life at a lighthouse so beautifully I wanted to pack up my life and move there immediately.. She describes whale hunting in its gruesome detail, draws the heart-rending aspects of mental illness without glancing away. Now of course I must re- read Moby Dick. I feel that this book provides a humanity to Ahab, and makes me wish for more. And hey bravo for a book that describes the life of women in this time. Una is a bit tooooo perfect for me, so open and forgiving and tolerant. It seems unlikely at that time. But I was so willing to suspend disbelief and trust in the story and it was beautiful. ( )
Captain Ahab,Moby Dick, and Ishamael are three of the most well known characters in American literature. One of the things I most liked about this take on the tale was the way several real life people were included in Una Ahab's telling of the story. Four of these names were instantly recognizable to me. Three of them are writers who are required reading I'm many schools; i.e. Henry James, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. But there were three characters who whose names I didn't actually recognize, all three were close friends of Una; and there was just something about the passion in which the author described them that made we wonder. So I googled them, and it turns out yes, they were actual historical figures. Margaret Fuller the first full time American female book reviewer and strong women's rights. Maria Mitchell the first person to discover a comment using a telescope. And Phebe Folger Coleman an acclaimed poet and artist. I think it says a lot about history is taught in our schools. For far too long women have not been getting the recognition they deserve for the accomplishments they have made. I said earlier there were four names I recognized instantly. The fourth was Frederick Douglass. He had only a minor role in this novel but the accolades the author bestowed upon him make it clear of the vital and very influential role Douglass played in the fight against slavery. So how is it that the President of this nation does not know of the importance of Frederick Douglas ? Answer, he lived his entire life in that ivory tower and is totally out of touch with the People. We The People deserve better that that ! ( )
Naslund, the author of four previous books of fiction, is most successful here sentence to sentence, where her gift for pleasure shines. Her Una is a deep and wayward creature, undaunted by convention, whose descriptions are dense with a languid and sensual interest in the world. Unlike Ahab, Una can wait. She is not driven; for her, the world is enough.
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
One must take off her fear like clothing; One must travel at night; This is the seeking after God. --Maureen Morehead, "In a Yellow Room"
Dedicatoria
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
In Token Of My Admiration and Affection This Book Is Inscribed To John C. Morrison
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
A dart tipped with pleasure and feathered with pain passed through me.
How could I … become blind? What trajectory intended for me, determined by me, could include the subtracting of sight from the sense of me?
And I thought I would not tell… Though it left me a liar, it left me having placed a higher value on Charlotte’s happiness than on my own clean conscience. But was it not arrogance in me that made me think I knew best in the matter, that my hand at the stopcock had the wisdom to regulate the flow of truth?
Sometimes my mother and I stood and looked at our faces together in the oval mirror she had brought with her from the East. … Thus, elegantly framed, my mother and I made a double portrait of ourselves for memory, by looking in the mirror.
…I have ever feared the weathervane in me. Sometimes I point toward Independence, isolation. Sometimes I rotate – my back to Independence – and I need and want my friends, my family, with a force like a gale. … I do not count myself fickle, for I have much of loyalty in me, but I am changeable.
When I hugged Frannie, I felt I was hugging a sturdy little churn. The moment I let go of her, the dasher inside made her jump and jump again with joy.
People cross our paths casually, when trumpets should blast.
At your own death … can the vastness of your own experience be buried in the ground, funneled into nothing but the shape of a grave?
Youth doesn’t last. … I could not through any act of will make my youth last. Cooking recommended me with more assurance.
…I was alone, as everyone is when the universe opens its black mouth. It swallowed my babe and me, and spit me out again.
… it was her absence, not her death, that seemed real. The way she was not held by the walls of the cabin. The vacancy in the air.
The waters of grief rose up in the well of me.
Anger that she should have died lay in my left hand and sorrow, for him, in my right. Someone had knitted black mittens for me, and within their muffling wool, over the mud-stained grave, sorrow clasped anger and anger sorrow, with all their might, till they were the same.
This is the way it is in life. You pursue something new and don't even know that the wind of your own running is a thief.
Where we choose to be, where we choose to be - we have that power to determine our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.
"Your idea of dangerous and mine are worlds apart."
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
Each day and forever, by the ticking of the mantel clock and by the dark wheeling of the cosmos, we have given time a home.
The adventures of Una Spenser who went to sea disguised as a cabin boy. Shipwrecked, she marries one of the survivors, then falls in love with Captain Ahab, a man obsessed with a white whale. She becomes involved in fighting slavery and in women's rights.
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Ahab's Wife
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