The Plover, Brian Doyle
The Plover, Brian Doyle
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The Plover

Author: Brian Doyle

Narrator: David Drummond

Unabridged: 9 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/13/2014


Synopsis

Declan O Donnell has sailed out of Oregon and deep into the vast, wild ocean, having had just finally enough of other people and their problems. He will go it alone, he will be his own country, he will be beholden to and beloved of no one. No man is an island, my butt, he thinks. I am that very man...

But the galaxy soon presents him with a string of odd, entertaining, and dangerous passengers, who become companions of every sort and stripe. The Plover is the story of their adventures and misadventures in the immense blue country one of their company calls Pacifica. Hounded by a mysterious enemy, reluctantly acquiring one new resident after another, Declan O Donnell's lonely boat is eventually crammed with humor, argument, tension, and a resident herring gull.

Brian Doyle's The Plover is a sea novel, a maritime adventure, the story of a cold man melting, a compendium of small miracles, an elegy to Edmund Burke, a watery quest, a battle at sea—and a rapturous, heartfelt celebration of life's surprising paths, planned and unplanned.

About Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle (1956-2017) was the longtime editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, in Oregon. He is the author of six collections of essays, two collections of "proems," two nonfiction books, the short story collection Bin Laden's Bald Spot, the novella Cat's Foot, and the novels Mink River, The Plover, and Martin Marten.

Doyle's books have seven times been finalists for the Oregon Book Award, and his essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Orion, the American Scholar, the Sun, the Georgia Review, and in newspapers and magazines around the world, including the New York Times, the Times of London, and the Age (in Australia). His essays have also been reprinted in the annual Best American Essays, Best American Science & Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies.

Among various honors for his work is a Catholic Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the John Burroughs Award for Nature Essays, Foreword Reviewss' Novel of the Year award in 2011, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008 (previous recipients include Saul Bellow, Kurt Vonnegut, Flannery O'Connor, and Mary Oliver).


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sue

A magical, wonderful sea adventure-coming of middle age-fantasy-exploration-ode to the watery world-hard to describe but must read. I now know I must get to my copy of Mink River and the Brian Doyle back catalogue. This was not even on my agenda to read until I happened to see it on the new release......more

Rating: 5++ Yet another masterful work of literary fiction, Brian Doyle takes the reader on a Pacific journey on 'The Plover' along with its owner, Declan O'Donnell, a character from Mink River. Having fallen in love with Doyle's creativity, lyrical narrative and blend of quirky characters and plot,......more