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Ahab's Wife
or, The Star Gazer ". . .away, oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow--wife?wife?--rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her. . ." -Ahab, Moby Dick by Herman Melville. From these brief musings of Captain Ahab, Sena Jeter Naslund created a woman, a life and a novel. Una Spenser is the young wife "widowed" by her captain and Ahab's Wife or, The Star Gazer is the book that details her life. Ahab's Wife is a great novel. Una's thought life is as clearly and vividly detailed as the adventures she undertakes--from dressing as a boy to work on a whaling ship to traveling through the woods with a midget who hunts down escaped slaves. Naslund beautifully demonstrates Una's inner struggles with questions of philosophy and the evil inside of all humanity, even herself. The book is also a spiritual journey, in which we see Una suffering at the hand of her father, who attempts to force her to believe in God. She turns away from his hellfire religion, but turns towards the spiritual in the connections she feels with the sea, the lighthouse she grew up in and the people around her. Throughout the telling of Una's life, Naslund maintains a writing style that is more modern than Melville's Quaker speech, but is also more flowery than what most of us are used to. The result is a dream-like quality that captures the reader, and makes this book one you wish would never end. |
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