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Tag Archives: whaling

Selfless and Selfish: Rush Oh!

02 Monday May 2016

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

aggression, Australia, George Davidson, historical fiction, humor, killer whales, literary fiction, New South Wales, orcas, Shirley Barrett, whaling

Review: Rush Oh!, by Shirley Barrett
Little, Brown, 2016. 353 pp. $25

Where I live, in Seattle, whales are both a cultural icon and a marvel. Only the other week, a gray whale wandered into the locks between Lakes Union and Washington. As you may imagine, that created a stir and a delicate rescue operation, as cetaceans aren’t known for their ability to make U-turns in narrow lanes. I also fondly recall family vacations with the kids in Canada’s Gulf Islands, between the coast of Washington and Vancouver Island, where we often saw pods of orcas swim past, a marine ballet of such beauty that I felt honored, small, and insignificant.

Twofold Bay, New South Wales, was an important whaling center (Courtesy Wikemedia Commons; public domain).

Twofold Bay, New South Wales, was an important whaling center (Courtesy Wikemedia Commons; public domain).

So I picked up Rush Oh!, a novel about whaling in Australia during the early twentieth century, with a stone in my heart. Was I supposed to root for the impoverished whaling families who went hungry if they sold no whale oil or whalebone, or the magnificent creatures of the deep? And, once I began reading, what was I supposed to make of the orcas that harried the larger whales into harpoon range in return for a literal cut of the profits? Were they traitors or friends?

However, I’m happy to report that Rush Oh! is a wonderful book, a delicate authorial operation that surprises and enchants with no heavy lifting. Barrett glosses over nothing, neither the brutality of killing and capturing a whale, nor the characters of the men who do this work at Twofold Bay, nor the hardscrabble life of Eden, New South Wales. But this isn’t a novel about whaling as much as it is about love, or the lengths a person can and should go to get what he or she wants. Just as it takes great effort to track and capture a whale, so it does to find love or realize a dream.

At nineteen, Mary Davidson has particular trouble realizing her own–or even allowing herself to have them. In the six years since her mother died, she’s been maid-of-all-work at her father’s whaling station and surrogate mother to her younger brothers and sisters. She cooks for the family and the whaling crews, keeps house, teaches her siblings their letters, and makes sure her father, a respected man of whom she’s in awe, has what he needs. Mary wants more from life but also assumes that servitude is her lot and that she has no choice, either as a woman or as George “Fearless” Davidson’s eldest child. She might have had an easier time had she social graces, a fair face, or the courage to speak up. Those belong to the next sister in line, Louisa; their rivalry frames the story.

Mary hungers for warmth, whether from her father, siblings, or a man, and gets precious little. She notices that the whaling men stop swearing and mind their manners when Louisa’s around, entranced by her looks and “the will-o’-the-wisp way she floated about, avoiding anything that might look like work. The various flaws of her character seemed to pass undetected.”

One pleasure of reading Rush Oh! is Mary’s wry, naive voice, a pitch-perfect narration. You see what she sees and laugh, but you also see what she misses, which is a lot. For instance, Louisa is indeed a piece of work, selfish and willful. But her real advantage over Mary is that she knows what she wants and sets out to get it. Nowhere is the comparison more evident than in Mary’s attraction for John Beck, a newcomer to the whaling crew who may (or may not) have been a Methodist minister. In fact, there are several things he may or may not have done. But Mary falls for him, and the reader senses that hers is a heart about to be broken.

I love witty writing, and there’s plenty here. Consider this passage about Mr. and Mrs. Maudry, the family’s name for a pair of aggressive plovers that

. . . when they were not preoccupied with matters nesting . . . contented themselves with stalking broodingly about the garden and glowering at us. Mr. Maudry in particular possessed a malevolent air similar to that of a Land and Tax officer or Customs agent, an effect enhanced by the plovers’ plumage, in which nature appeared to be imitating the black-collared suit coats of the kind favored by my late paternal grandfather. By all accounts entirely capable of flight, the Maudrys for the most part elected not to, preferring to spend their days instead lurking ominously amongst the jonquils.

About those orcas, known as Killers. They have names, behaviors particular to each individual, a sense of humor, and loyalty to the whalers, who consider it a crime to kill one–especially the Aboriginal hunters, who believe each orca holds an ancestor’s spirit. These creatures actually existed; one, known as Tom, lived about sixty years, and when he died in 1930, the newspapers noted the fact.

All of which underlines how Rush Oh! plumbs the space between truth and fiction, and what you think you know about each.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Keeping Focus: The Movement of Stars

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1845, Amy Brill, astronomy, characterization, feminism, historical fiction, Nantucket, navigation, nineteenth century, Quakers, whaling, women

Review: The Movement of Stars, by Amy Brill
Riverhead, 2013. 388 pp. $28

Hannah Price wants the moon, or, to be precise (and she values precision above all else), a comet. A Quaker woman living on Nantucket in 1845, Hannah scans the skies nightly, searching for a comet that no one else has catalogued. If she succeeds, she’ll win a prize from the king of Denmark, but Hannah’s not looking for fame (though the prize money would come in handy). Rather, she dreams of contributing to scientific knowledge.

On Nantucket, or anywhere in 1845, this isn’t the path women are supposed to follow, especially Quaker women. Hannah has a little leeway, because her father is an astronomer; they repair and adjust chronometers for the ships that come to port, the island’s economic lifeblood. Better yet, her former teacher, the influential Dr. Hall, has encouraged her brilliance at mathematics and science. However, men are always the ones to decide what she can do, and where. And since her mother died when she was very young, her only ally is her twin brother Edward, now away at sea.

U. S. Coast Survey chart including Nantucket, 1857 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

U. S. Coast Survey chart including Nantucket, 1857 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Into this delicate balance steps Isaac Martin, a whaling crew member to whom Hannah offers lessons in celestial navigation. Their friendship sets tongues wagging, especially since Isaac comes from the Azores and is dark-skinned. Unlike its Ohio counterpart in The Last Runaway (April 23), the Friends Meeting of Nantucket is firmly abolitionist, though hardly more tolerant. Hannah risks being kicked out of Meeting (and suffering her father’s discipline) by having social relations with a nonbeliever, proper though these relations are–for the moment.

The Movement of Stars is worth reading for its protagonist. Hannah is a very difficult person, for whom the only ready emotion is anger, and who sees slights everywhere. That she’s often correct doesn’t obscure how socially inept she is, even cruel. She’s more than dimly aware that her inability to make chitchat or contribute to the necessary social grease has cost her. Brill has done superbly here, creating sympathy for an unpleasant outcast, no mean feat. That Hannah also learns to see more clearly, extending her search for the truth of the heavens to those of human interaction, is another masterstroke. Yet she never gives up her anger at being thwarted or manipulated by men, even those she loves, and I admire her unwillingness to compromise what she believes. Against her will and love of precision, toward the end, she reluctantly concludes that “two competing Truths could in fact coexist in one mind.” (By the way, F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that this ability was the test of a first-rate intelligence. It’s one of my favorite quotes.)

Unfortunately, the rest of The Movement of Stars doesn’t live up to its heroine. None of the other characters seem full to me; I’m disappointed in Dr. Hall and Hannah’s father, Nathaniel, who feel like straw men, at times. Brill tries to suggest more, and I like Hannah’s confusion about their motives, but I’m confused too. Most importantly, I can’t grasp Isaac, who reads like a stock character–the taciturn, down-to-earth sailor whose homespun wisdom turns Hannah’s life around. I believe her attraction for him, all right, for what he represents, and the internal struggle she has over the pull he exerts seems real and significant. But Isaac assumes that any hesitations she has about him must be due to race or class prejudice alone, which makes him the only man in the novel who gets away with ignoring the barriers she faces as a woman.

There’s one other way in which The Movement of Stars loses focus, and that’s the prose. The last few chapters stray from the nineteenth century in tone and manner, as when Nathaniel says, “Thy travels have certainly impacted thee.” Whoops. To be sure, it’s a first novel, and an accomplished one. But it’s fair to ask how Brill, skilled at observing interactions, would tell, tell, tell: “When she was near him, Hannah felt both exhilarated and free at the same time, the way she felt when she was observing. The idea of parting from him was excruciating.” That reads like shorthand, not characterization.

That said, I still recommend The Movement of Stars. Not only is Hannah a fascinating character, I liked reading about the whaling and Quaker communities (highly intertwined) of Nantucket.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

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