Ahab's Wife: Or, the Star-Gazer: A Novel

"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor will he be my last." With this sentence, Sena Jeter Naslund opens one of the most engrossing stories I have read in a long time. There is only a brief reference to Mrs. Ahab in the book Moby Dick but from this, Ms Naslund has built a complete history for a very unusual woman. Set in the mid 1800s, Una's story is that of a young woman raised in a liberal setting during a time of constrictive social mores. At the age of 12, she is sent to live with her aunt and uncle to escape her father's religious zealousness which demands acceptance of a faith she detests. She spends the next few years on an island helping her relatives maintain a light house. As she matures, she grows more and more obsessed by the sea . On a whim, she dresses as a man and follows two of her friends, Giles and Kit, onto a whaling ship where she serves as a cabin boy. After the ship wrecks , they are marooned for several weeks in a lifeboat and the three of them are the sole survivors. The events surrounding their survival are tragic and inescapable. They are taken onto the Pequod by Captain Ahab and Una marries Kit. This marriage is short lived and she then marries Captain Ahab whom she deeply loves. The background for Moby Dick is set and the story of the women left behind begins. The months and years of living independently teaches them to be resilient and resourceful. They are dependent on one another for almost everything and so are kind and considerate. Ms Naslund's paragraphs are beautifully constructed. Each sentence is as separate and yet complete as a string of beautiful pearls. She touches on the social problems of that era--from slavery to women's right to vote to homosexuality. However she really shines when she is sharing the day-to-day life of a time and place that no longer exists. "Life is what happens while we're waiting for something to happen" and this author excels in the telling of the mundane details of life.

Author Naslund takes up the tale of the young wife Ahab mentions but briefly in Moby Dick. It takes place during and after the loss of the Pequod during its fatal hunt for the great White Whale and is the first-person memoir of Una Spenser.This book is so literary, so well crafted for its subject that I can't believe it was written in 1999 and not in the late 1800's. Only a few anachronisms betray the modern date for Ahab's Wife. (A mention of kiwi fruit for one, they were not cultivated outside of China nor known as Kiwi until the early 1900's)Una Spenser (named for Spenser's character in the Faerie Queene) is a courageous yet imaginative heroine. She struggles against God, against slavery, against traditional women's' roles in pre-Civil War America, runs away to sea, and meets Captain Ahab after a harrowing experience aboard ship.The scope of this book is grand and it is written a bit in style that pays homage to Melville, grasping some of Melville's poetry and symbology of Nature and also the sexual ambiguity. But Naslund also stitches in a bit of Virginia Woolf and To The Lighthouse. Sections of Melville's work are patched in to form a smooth story of Ahab's soul mate, his female side, Una, whom he loved and abandoned for his destiny with Moby Dick.In fact, this book reminds me of the patchwork quilts mentioned many times in Ahab's Wife. The pieces are stitched together (12 stitches to the inch, Una can sew) in colors that blend to make a pleasing whole. Yet pieces of fabric come from many diverse sources, such as the Melville classic and Woolf as well as others. This is a brilliant achievement of a novel yet reads like a magnificent yarn. Naslund is not only a master writer but also a master storyteller. I could not put this book down until I finished every last page and I am going to re-read it immediately.

Ms. Naslund has presented us with a gem ... the character of Una, a female protagonist that is unapologetically intelligent, passionate, strong and independent. The story will "ring true" to all who have journeyed into the valley of suffering and shaken the bony hand of the devil that resides within each of us. Moreover it is a story of redemption, of joy found in the face of adversity, of forgiveness extended from one flawed soul to another. I read the entire book in two nights, and wanted to go back to the first page almost as soon as I'd turned the last. It is without question one of the finest books I have ever read.

That recent spate of imagined sequels to classics-"Mrs. DeWinter," "Cosette," whatever-they-were-called sequels to Jane Austen-were generally less than successful, which makes it all the more surprising that the least likely of them should be such a success. Mrs. Ahab? Are you kidding? Sena Jeter Naslund creates a very plausible relationship between her protagonist Una and Moby-Dick's pursuer, and very, very wisely makes it just one element in Una's life. "Mrs. Ahab" takes Una from her home in the Kentucky wilderness to a New England lighthouse, to sea on a whaling ship, to a fine home in bustling Nantucket. She deals with the hot button issues of the day in elegant detail, and makes Una's involvement in the abolitionist movement, the rise of Transcendentalist thought, and the age's fascination with the natural sciences believable and logical.Perhaps Naslund's greatest achievement is to create a protagonist who is bold, headstrong and passionate without making her seem like a 1990's woman decked out in a crinoline. Una is as modern as a woman of the 1830's and 40's would be. The author's historic research goes far beyond knowing what people wore and ate: we are shown how they regarded the remarkable advances being made in their time, and how they considered their world. Candace Siegle

Those who have read A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE have probably yearned for a similar reading experience ever since they read that masterpiece. For me, AHAB'S WIFE fulfills that yearning. This ingeniously imagined book is loaded with real characters from the time of American history's greatest outpouring of literature and philosophicalthought: Emerson, Hawthorne, James, Bronson Alcott, Maria Mitchell, Frederick Douglass, and Margaret Fuller. (I don't recall that the creator of MOBY-DICK is mentioned; he was no doubt busy at his day job in New York at the time.) What we are given is a take on early nineteenth century life by one who writes of that time with such assurance and poetic beauty that one feels that Sena Jeter Naslund, too, has trafficked in the flowering of New England and she only is escaped alone to tell thee. As in Garcia-Marquez's epic, the reader--now sadder, happier, and wiser than he has any right to be--can only turn from the last page back to the first in hopes of reliving the enthralling experiences he has just experienced.