I tried. I tried so very hard, but I couldn't finish this dribbling monstrosity of literary masturbation. Naslund is talented, but she is aware of that talent and spends hundreds of pages waffling on in bogs of fanciful, wafting imagery and transports of utter symbolic jabberwocky that goes nowhere.

Una is pervasive. Una is cloying. Una is obnoxious. Everyone loves Una. Men fall in love with her at first sight. Lens mounters and three separate sea captains all vie for her affection. When she turns them down, they pine and despond. Hardy, crusty Captain Ahab is putty in her hands. Another suitor bursts into tears when she rebuffs him.

Magical Una. So innocent, yet so enlightened. Luminaries of feminism and abolitionism marvel at her incredible intelligence even though she has had no formal education. Fabulous Una, beacon of progressive thought. Wondrous Una, and oh, my God, I do not CARE. The story never goes anywhere or tells a fundamental truth of the human condition. It's just there, a meandering romp through the internal landscape of an interminable, insufferable bore. It's surreal, like a frat boy trying to light his fart on fire, only instead of a brazen gluteal roar, it's a whorling eddy of endless fluting and extraneous flourishes that never draw to a conclusion at all, let alone a satisfying one.

Flee from this book. It is a waste of time and trades upon the name of a famous character to lure you into the quagmire of someone else's fap fantasy.

I had seen Melki’s review on this book and it was so interesting, even though her rating was not that high, and so I purchased it. Melki just has a way with reviews…

"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last. Yet, looking up – into the clouds – I conjure him there: his gray-white hair; his gathered brow; and the zaggy mark…”

This was the beginning of the book and the words were more or less meaningless to me then but I continued; well they were just words and so I started skim-reading, came across “pregnancy” and read:

“I did not consult Ahab about my decision to spend my pregnancy in a rough Kentucky cabin, with my mother, instead of staying in the gracious home of a captain’s wife on Nantucket. But I wrote him, of course, and sent the letter after him on the ship called the Dove, so he could imagine me alright.”

More skim-reading and nothing of interest, and really I should have followed Melki’s advice in the last two paragraphs of her review:

“I didn't HATE this book, and it is NOT terrible. Much of it was well written, and I really enjoyed a few of the MANY storylines. The women in my book club loved it enough to pick it a SECOND time, even though most of them had already read and discussed it in 2001.

I just couldn't help wishing that Una had said, "Screw you, Ahab, you old fart!" and taken off with the runaway slave instead. Oh, and she should have definitely had a roll in the hay with the dwarf bounty hunter.”

Then I abandoned the book and sent it to its final resting place up in the Cloud of my Kindle.

The lesson I’ve learned is that I must be more prudent in my choice of books, even though I do want to extend my range. One also cannot go by the number of reviews on a global scale either.

And I’m not blaming Melki either…

In this sometimes overwhelming take on the Ahab story, using a few characters from the classic novel, Sena Jeter Naslund visits the life of Una, the wife of Captain Ahab, and the time she spends with her Captain is surprisingly gentle and romantic. The two of them don't truly find one another until about halfway through the novel, however. The beginning of Una's life is just as interesting, though in different ways. She is born in Kentucky, lives for several years with a lighthouse-keeping family, and then, most excitingly, goes to sea. Some of the things that happen to her during her time on the waves haunt her for the remainder of the novel.
The beauty of AHAB'S WIFE is in the supporting characters. David Poland, Susan, Frannie, the Judge, Mary Starbuck; these are interesting and beautifully drawn people, and I loved reading about (and from) them. Some characters were unnecessary and only removed focus from the story at hand. The subplot concerning Margaret Fuller could have been dropped entirely and it would have only tightened up the narrative (much to the benefit of the book as a whole).
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All in all, this is a rewarding read, if it does require an investment of time and energy. Ms. Naslund does not "write down" to her audience - she writes in a style that requires the reader to pay attention and engage themselves. For those who have the time, energy and interest to delve into the pages, AHAB'S WIFE can offer many gifts.

Sena Jeter Naslund may be one of the most ambitious writers of the 19th century. And that's saying a lot for a woman born in 1942.

Since she was a child, Naslund was annoyed by the scarcity of women characters in America's canonized literature. Her new novel, Ahab's Wife, grew from a stray reference in Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," and it goes a long way toward correcting that imbalance.

Una begins her sweeping voyage by confessing, "Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last." Here are the tales omitted - not just from "Moby Dick" - but from the whole sea of classic literature that pushed women over the horizon. Surprise: They aren't just darning socks and waiting for their men to come home.

The cargohold of this book is packed with heartbreaking struggle and richly imagined characters, including wonderful cameo appearances from a host of historical figures. Una's tumultuous story contains enough tragedy and triumph for a dozen novels. This is the kind of epic you sink into and willingly get lost in. Yes – I can't resist – it's a whale of a book.

At the breathless opening, Una is alone and in labor in a frozen Kentucky cabin. While she waits for her mother to return with a doctor, a young black girl bursts in, closely followed by a posse of slave catchers. One of the men, a midget dressed as a wolf, sniffs around aggressively, but Una manages to hide the girl under her bed and make a friendship that lasts the rest of her life.

A few days later, she watches her young friend escape across the ice in a wonderful allusion to Eliza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" – just one of hundreds of references to other books in this leviathan novel. (A fully annotated version of "Ahab's Wife" would be 50 pages longer, but even more fun.)

Standing alone in the snow by the new graves of her mother and baby, Una thinks, "The world was a vast whiteness barred by the black trunks and limbs of trees.... Did Ahab also mourn? I fastened my gaze on the brown haunches of the two horses and their color was a relief from the world of alabaster and ebony. After that, I looked skyward."

Far over the horizon, Ahab descends into madness inspired by another "vast whiteness," but Una finds a healthier salve for her loss. While he rages at the horror of nothingness, she contemplates the infinity of the stars. While he shrinks to a single purpose, she maintains a rich and varied life.

But getting there is a torturous process for Una. Having described the hardest loss of her story, she begins her story again, from the beginning.

To escape her cruel father, she was sent away to live with liberal relatives in a lighthouse on the Massachusetts coast. There she spent several idyllic years and formed a fast friendship with Kit and Giles, two young men who expanded her mind and fired her spirit.

When they go looking for adventure at sea, Una brazenly cuts her hair, dons a pair of pants, and signs up as a cabin boy on their whaling ship.

The adventures that follow are riveting – and horrible. Una meets her own whale with an attitude, and the results are devastating. Before she's rescued by a then two-footed Ahab, Una breaks a taboo for which she spends her life atoning.

The answers are entirely different, but the philosophical questions posed here are every bit as interesting as Melville's. Naslund hasn't just written a female version of "Moby Dick"; she doesn't invert the gender stereotypes of that masterpiece and reenact its exclusion of half the human race. Instead, she creates a world of complex characters learning to interact compassionately with each other in the face of nature's recalcitrance and their own.

Undulating between adventure and contemplation, "Ahab's Wife" is a tour de force, a wild voyage through the 19th century and the American canon. That old whale has finally met his match.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-R...

Terrific book - It turns Ahab's wife into a real person, and what a woman. Very enjoyable read of a girl - then woman who really survives terrible events to come to a place of peace. Ahab (of Moby Dick) does come into the story, but he is only a piece of Una's life.

Whoa-finally finished this baby. Reading this is quite an investment in time; at least 1000 words could easily be sliced out to create a more coherent epic.

Word of warning; whenever you have a novel, based on an american classic (and an infamously difficult one at that) written by an english professor, you can expect literary symbolism to abound. In this case, I think the author gets caught up in her own cleverness; she throws everything but the kitchen sink at us.

Freedom or "Liberty" seem to be the main theme (three women give birth to babies they name Liberty-two die in infancy and the last is born into slavery-ironic coincidence?...I think not). This theme is explored through the historical issues of the time; slavery, religion, womens rights, sex and sexuality, marriage, madness and obsession, isolation and boredom.

Along the way our main character, disguised as a boy, sails on a whaling ship, is shipwrecked at sea, survives through cannibalism to later become the model of female domesticity as Ahab's wife while interacting with a host of real historical american figures, mostly from the world of literature and transcendentalism. Like I said, alot going on and I left quite a bit out.

For whatever reason, the main character Una,named after Spenser's character in the Fairie Queen (the virginal Una representing truth, or the true religion;only an english professor could come up with that one!) held my interest till all but the very end when I just really got tired of all the comings and goings and nonsensical ramblings. Like I said, a strong hand with the editing pen would have made this a better read. But if you keep that in mind and skim ruthlessly through some of the sillier stuff, it is an engaging adventure tale-sort of a female Huck Finn.

I usually try to remain objective in my reviews, knowing that my taste will not match up with everyone's personal preferences, but with this one I simply cannot stand idly by and allow others to be reeled in by recommendations.

This was the absolute worst thing I have ever read. Terrible. No good. Very bad book. No plot, no character development, no believeable relationships, no literary depth. Just an amalgamation of my least favorite things, including, but not limited to: monotony, suicide, incest, rape, cannibalism, death, apathy, unbelievable characters, unnecessary details, etc.

Even if this book was 100 pages, it still would have been the most gargantuan waste of my time.

You have been lied to by the reviews. You have been lied to by the title. If you love reading at all: do yourself a favor and skip this one. I wish I had.

The most boring, pretentious, and "what the heck were the reviewers thinking???" book I've read in a long time; I made it to about page 345, mainly because I was trapped on the train and my ipod was out of battery, then gave up, skimmed the last chapter, and shook my head. No connection to the narrator, no sense of urgency in the plot, and a feeling that the author was smugly expecting you to appreciate her writing alone--not in a novel, baby.

I am torn between giving this 3 or 4 stars. It is beautifully written, but not entirely my cup of tea.

I loved the use of language. It's always amazing to me how someone with a masterful command of the language can take the same words you and I use daily and string them together in ways that make us entertain ideas we've never thought before, remind us of feelings we've had (but couldn't describe) in the past, and clarify muddled parts of our lives. Naslund does that at many junctures. However, that being said, I often found myself irritated: how many 19th century names can we drop in one story? How many social ills/taboos--okay, I'll say it, sins--can we cram into one book? (Can anyone say "too many"?) They're thrown in there in such an offhand manner sometimes, like Naslund had a checklist: Hmm, I haven't got rape in here anywhere yet. Let's have this character reveal that it happened to her. And then never bring it up again or tell why it was important that we know that. In the end, the biggest irritation with this book is the same one I have about Ayn Rand: it's all about me. (Not me; the mes in the books.) Una ("one"; that should be a tipoff right there) explores the heights and depths of human experience, and what she comes up with is, it's all about her: her likes, her thoughts, her moral compass (pointing a little south of true north in a lot of ways), her preeminence. It got tiresome.

I listened to an abridged version of this length 668-pg novel that is based loosely on Moby Dick. Other readers seem to really love or really loathe it. I'll stick to the middle.

On the positive side, this is all about rags to riches, coming-of-age, and ending up okay for a girl who starts life posing as a boy. On the less appealing side, it is about killing whales, whales attacking ships, men losing legs, women left behind for a year or two at a time, miscarriages, mental health, and other unfortunate developments.

It offers a nice exploration of science and religion. In tone, it reminds me of Annie Proulx's The Shipping News with its barren landscapes and quiet language. It is probably worth taking a second look at it at a later time. For me now, it falls into the well-written but didn't really like it category.

I usually don’t blog books I don’t like, but I’m making an exception here. Sena Jeter Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife was recommended to me as a book I couldn’t put down. I had no trouble at all--either literally or figuratively. The opening sentence “Ahab was not my first husband, nor may last,” has a certain ring to it, but things went downhill from there.
I made it through about 75 pages, but had to quit not long after the little slave girl jumped ice floes across the Ohio from Kentucky to freedom. Sound familiar? I also couldn’t abide the pseudo victorian language, nor the little girls’ worship of the phallic lighthouse. But it was the Harriet Beecher Stowe ripoff that did me in. Maybe you’ll like it. I hope not. If I could give it less than one star. . .