This was such a frustrating read. Essentially, it was just an account of events. There was no central mystery or conflict. The author spent way too much time on meaningless tangents. Many of the secondary characters and events were interesting, but they seemed to have no lasting effect on the heroine. She seemed unchanged throughout the entire book, which left me wondering what the point of it all was. And I think the book was very mistakenly titled. Una was Ahab's wife for a very short time, and unfortunately he was one of those characters who seemed to have very little lasting effect on her. She kept telling the reader that she and Ahab were kindred souls who miraculously knew each other intimately without ever needing to talk about anything. I was consistently frustrated with her insistence that a true marriage is one in which the spouses share everything in common and are always in agreement.

Sena Jeter Naslund does the impossible with each book. In Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-Gazer, the heroine, Una, dresses as a boy so she can escape to the sea, and later marries captain Ahab. Yep, that Ahab. These few plot basics, which you can read on the back of the book, almost chased me away with the threat of cheese factor. But I remembered, hey, SJN can do anything.

Una is strong, sensitive, engaging, well-read, and seated somewhere comfortably between the realms of traditional woman and man. She's kind of who I want to be, inside.

I was intrigued by Una's interactions with Transcendentalists (will try to avoid spoilers though!). I've loved Transcendentalist philosophy for years, but in a way, Una's reactions to it work better for me than the originals. Her thoughts center on the fact that we can take a lot from these interpretations of nature and life, but most of us have to adapt them for a world where we deal with other people and more situations beyond our control than the philosophers planned for. Yet we all continue to look at the stars and connect with something much bigger, whether than be the souls of other humans, a supreme being, or some sort of indescribable, beautiful power.

There...I have finished it. It was like reading someone's diary. Too long, too detailed, and monotonous in tone. No suspense, unless you don't know the end of Moby Dick, no ebb or flow. It just reads, slowly and laboriously for 666 pages in first person of a woman that doesn't exist. If this were about a real person, I would consider this valid. If it were a reflection of the hardships of being a captain's wife or a seamstress in the 1800's, I would also give it merit. But instead we have an extraordinary, direct-minded, publicly correct unrealistic character who just manages to encounter by accident many famous real and fictional characters. And we are suppose to adore her. The author did not take any chances with our affections making sure that she was a woman who accepted obscurities, defied religious beliefs, encouraged women's rights, befriended a slave and a dwarf as equals, could argue with the champions of transcendentalist even though she grew up on a tiny island with two adults and a four year old. I kept hoping she would do something mean spirited like tell the dwarf to go find a woman or cease talking to her neighbor because he was a too into china cups. It was very easy to lose interest in her character because she moved in a predictable direction. Things just happened to her. The only two decisions she made were to jump on a whaling ship disguised as a cabin boy and to marry Captain Ahab, both of which made me want to stop reading because I felt my interest wain. But finish it I did. And now I know never to name my first child Liberty or else it be doomed. Sorry, just can't recommend this and my apologies to the book club for choosing it.

Mesmerizing, brilliant, stunning, epic! Moby Dick was required reading for us in high school eons ago. I was one of the few in my class who enjoyed MD, so I thought I might enjoy this; however, I found I LOVED this epic tale of adventure and love and friendship that reads like classic American literature. It's very long but never the least bit boring. The historical detail is truly impressive and the black and white illustrations are perfection. I simply cannot heap enough praise on this book or on Naslund's great talent. If in my power, I would shower it with dozens of literary awards.

Would be closer to a 4 because the writing is beautiful, almost like poetry, but it’s a little too lengthy (unnecessarily). Lovely take on a classic, Moby Dick, but with a nice twist of focusing solely on women.

I can't finish this book. I have labored through 68% of it (per my Kindle). I appreciate the main character, Una, as a freethinker and I know that was definitely a struggle for women of that time. However, it is just a little too ridiculous and far fetched when all these people meet her and just seem to "fall in love" with her immediately. The author tried to make her some tarnished heroine that is both beautiful and highly intelligent. That she may be, but I could not find much about her character that I could appreciate.

I came to Goodreads to look at the reviews and help bolster me on to finish the book. I sometimes do that to keep myself going. I purposely find positive reviews and use them to be my cheerleader. I HATE giving up on books. In fact, I don't remember the last time I did not finish a book. (I had to create a new "unfinished" category today.) Yet, I knew I could not finish this one when I found a review that mirrored my thoughts and then said the book got WORSE in the last 1/3. No way. I started this book 6 MONTHS ago. I can't do it anymore. Life is way too short.

A Ship is a Breath of Romance
That Carries Us Miles Away.
And a Book is a Ship of Fancy
That Could Sail on Any Day

There you have it. This is why books are better than ships. Well, maybe not this book...

Almost nine months ago, my book club picked this one as the February read, so I had plenty of time to read it. And I had the best intentions. I ordered a used copy last October, a nice first-edition hardback, heavy as any doorstop. I glanced at it and put it in my stack. Plenty of time to read it, no hurry. Other books got piled on top, and well, you know how it is... I thought about starting it a few times. Somehow, it's like I knew it was going to be a "Meh!" read for me. Finally, a scant nine days before the club meeting, I started reading.

There's a WHAM! BANG! beginning, with a riveting birth scene attended by a runaway slave. Then we hop back in time til when young Una , after being threatened physically by her maniacally religious father, is sent to live in a lighthouse with her aunt, uncle and lovable young cousin. One day, two potential love interests arrive to install a newfangled Fresnel lens. Hmm....will she choose the chatty one who seems smitten with her, or the dark, brooding mysterious one?

And then, after something bad happens, she cuts her hair and signs aboard a whaling ship as a cabin boy. (I swear, I could almost hear Streisand singing "Papa, Can You Hear Me?")

What follows are pages and pages of blood, guts, blubber, tragedy, disaster and death.
Una and one of her beaus end up on the Pequod, where there is more blood and blubber, and now some madness thrown into the mix, as well.

Rather disturbingly, I thought, Una, still in her teens, ends up married to Ahab, a man in his fifties.
More bad stuff happens, with a brief time out for tea parties, and some china and linen shopping.

Then the book kind of descends into a Forrest Gumpian fantasy where if anyone important was alive at the time and hanging about Nantucket, Una manages to meet them. (I'm surprised to find she didn't somehow serve as the model for the Statue of Liberty.)

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.

This was a great novel that I read for bookclub. A wonderful story about the wife of Captain Ahab (of Moby Dick). She brought to life the reality of a sea captain's wife. A wonderful glimpse of the times.

Sent to another bookcrosser who read it, loved it and wild released it.

The first portion of this book was fascinating and well-written. Naslund's imagining of the details of the ill-fated travels of Captain Ahab and his wife are picturesque, with just the right gothic touches thrown in to lend horror where horror should be.

I liked the main character and was rooting for her... until the return to the States after the grotesque voyage that sent Ahab over the edge.

For some reason, Naslund chose to focus on the literati and cognoscenti of the era instead of simply continuing to present the story of this remarkable woman.

The entire last... half? third? of the book is a contrived, name-dropping tour of the transcendentalists, statesmen and scientists of the time. Ahab's wife is constantly running into them on the road, in the woods, at the gym, in the grocery store... OK, I'm getting a little snarky, but that's the way it felt: to coincidental and too contrived.

I kept getting the feeling Naslund had no destination for her character, so she just wandered off through the political and intellectual landscape at the time and hoped readers would be so impressed with the array of local legends they wouldn't notice the complete lack of story and character.

I really, really disliked this book, which I feel is saying a lot. I can't remember the last time I was ready for a book to be over when I was only halfway through it. I was intrigued by the premise. In this book we are given the story of Ahab's wife, Una. Ahab, if that name isn't familiar, is the obsessed whaleboat captain in Moby Dick. As I think about it now, the title is a bit misleading. I would say that only 1/3 to 1/4 of the book actually spends time on Una's marriage with Ahab. I digress.

On the cover of the book is a quote by a reviewer: "Beautifully written." I agreed with that statement when I began the book. Naslund has a wonderful way with words, but after reading for a while, I felt that she was trying too hard to be lyrical and existential. I felt many times that I was reading the work of someone who likes to hear herself talk. I don't know the author, but if this is a statement of her personality, we probably wouldn't connect.

Then I had problems with the main character herself. Time and time again I wondered what everyone was so enamored with. Every person Una comes into contact with, save her father, seems to worship her within a matter of hours. I found this irritating because there seemed to be no character flaws at all. In the one instance I can remember, when someone gave her a piece of their mind through a letter, the letter writer, by the end of the letter, is expressing that they are sorry they were ever mad at her and they want to reconnect. Really?

By the end, I also felt that the book had a huge gap in the realm of reality. I did not see an authentic human struggle with Una. She simply is who she is and expresses no regrets. To be sure, that character trait alone is not a shortcoming, but when this attitude leads to condescension of those that share different beliefs, it is indeed a shortcoming of pride.

My final grousing point is the intentional way that the author seems to shout for the characters, "Look at us! We defy the world and are proud of it! See us defy cultural and societal norms! We're cool!" Between unwed mothers, agnostics and universalists, homosexuals and extreme feminists, I was constantly unsuprised and exasperated. Let me clarify that I have no problem with people that have beliefs other than mine. Again it is the smug pride that I felt was layered beneath these characters that drove me nuts. I had the sense that if I tried to engage any of these characters in a discussion of beliefs and ideas, the only person who would actually listen would be Una's mother. I got the sense that the others would always listen politely and answer with the patience of an adult with a small child. Okay, I'm done.

Read this because it was recommended to be by my mother. Never again. Over-wrought, pretentious, and melodramatic. I was warned that the writing style would get on my nerves, but promised that the story was worth it. It didn't even out, for me. Couldn't get into the story, the characters, and couldn't get past Naslund's prose.

I'm just considering this one a week and a half of my life that should have been spent re-reading Moby Dick instead.

This is a beautifully written story of the other side of Moby Dick. Una's story is compelling while her views are limited to a small area of the cape and life at sea, you still get a feel for what life was like on the east coast just before the civil war. To say more might spoil any surprises - but I will say that I loved this story. If you have any connection to life by the seashore you will love it too.