Book Review: The Voyage of the Narwhal

The Voyage of the Narwhal by Andrea Barrett, is a novel about Arctic exploration in the mid-nineteenth century. The protagonist of the story is Erasmus Darwin Wells, a naturalist who sees his middle age approaching and considers himself to be something of a failure in life. Given an opportunity to redeem himself by signing on with an expedition that is heading to Arctic regions of the Northwest Passage, ostensibly in search of the [real] lost expedition of Sir John Franklin, he leaps at the chance of adventure, and perhaps fame.

The Narwhal expedition is being led by Zechariah Voorhees, a young man who was mentored by Erasmus' father and is now engaged to be married to Erasmus' sister Lavinia. "Zeke" would love to be the one to find the remains of the Franklin expedition where others have failed, and more than that he is obsessed with searching for an open polar sea. (Note: An expedition leader with an obsession is almost always not good.)

The first half of the book proceeds as one might expect it would: ice, cold, deprivation, frostbite ... you know, the usual stuff of Arctic tales. It was compelling (although in my opinion, nowhere near as compelling as reading the true story Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing, which is EXCELLENT.)

My interest picked up in the second half of the book, when the expedition has returned and Erasmus must resume his life in pre-Civil War Philadelphia. That's all I'm going to give away; you knew they were going to come back, didn't you? I mean, they had to, because Erasmus is kind of telling the story ...

Barrett had done her research, and I liked the interweaving of fact and fiction. My one complaint is that the sensibilities seemed too modern. Barrett did a good job of painting human emotions and desires, but I'm not sure that people living in that time would have framed them in quite the way they were portrayed.

Overall, I enjoyed The Voyage of the Narwhal. If you are looking for something a little different, if you like historical fiction, I recommend it. It is probably not one that I'll keep to read again.