The Voyage of the Narwhal

This is the story of a fictional 1855 expedition to the Arctic to search for a missing explorer who disappeared 10-years before. An expedition that will cost the lives of several men and change forever the lives of the others with guilt, anger and horror. Another way it can be described is that it i......more

Andrea Barrett's novel about the era of discovery and exploration in the Arctic is intoxicating. Especially for me after a diet of mysteries and thrillers that are often entertaining but rarely memorable, reading truly literary fiction by a master is like breathing pure oxygen. What makes it "literar......more

A beautiful, immersive, historic novel about the forgotten age of ship exploration. Voyage of the Narwhal is heavily populated with actual historical persons, along with a handful of imagery folks for the sake of telling the tale, as well. While reading this book, I actually felt like I, too, was an......more

After posting this initially, I discovered some notes I made during the read, so I have done a bit of revision. 26/10/15 This story brings to life the world of arctic exploration, much in vogue in the nineteenth century. I was expecting a tale of seafaring adventure, and while there is a very affecti......more

I chose to read this book because I have always been fascinated with polar exploration & doomed expeditions. I thought that this was what this book was about. And in a minor way, it is. But truthfully, it goes way beyond this expectation and way beyond this particular story line. In 1855, all the ne......more