I was struck often by a well turned, poetic sentence. This lengthy novel is worth the investment of time. The character of Una is beautifully and truthfully shared with the reader. This novel is also a tale of the adventurous, hungry soul of a woman who feels compelled to join the workings of each turn of the universe, the spectacular and the routine.

I dug a bit into other reviews around here and noticed that some criticize the book as being some sort of elevated chick-lit. Like the author is vicariously living out her fantasy of being adored by historical and important literary figures, through Una, the main character.

I really did not think this is the case, and I know the kind of books this kind of critique is referring to. Una is not the poster girl for all social achievements, she does not get everything her way and not all men she encounters want her. She is perfectly capable of building lasting friendships with both men and women, any romantic interest is a rare afterthought. Sometimes her romantic interest goes unreciprocated.

Also, regarding the name-dropping the author has also been accused of: I didn't mind the references to famous scientists of literary figures one bit. Una's story is both allegorical and perfectly realistic/plausible within the Moby Dick universe. The famous people who make it to the pages are just a few, and they don't seem to be put there just because. Also, Una doesn't have a super-close relationship with all of them.

Now I finished disclaiming the ways others have criticized the book, I can move on to say how I felt about it and what I liked. Yes, it's very postmodern to take a known story and piggyback it to expand on it. But in this case, the expansion was lovely, lovelier than the original Moby Dick story, contouring the world of Nantucket to greater life and worthy as a stand-alone.

I also liked how the story helps to dismantle the myth that people used to be more socially conservative before, in the times of tradition with a capital T. It wasn't actually like that, that's just the story present-day conservatives like to tell to reinforce their pitiable claims. I have also known this to be true from non-fiction reads but it's nice to see the view portrayed through a pretty story, too.

A very complex read. I learned that sailor's historically wore golden earrings because wherever they died the earring would pay for their burial.

I learned about survival of one sort or another: sustenance living on a remote farm in Kentucky; sustenance living at the site of a lighthouse; sustenance living on a whaler and sustenance living while stranded on a raft with two men you love and others. Ah me.

There was, of course, my fascination with the houses that Ahab's wife lived within. The cabin, the lighthouse, the boarding house, the fine home and the beach cottage.

This novel was written based upon a tiny passage in MOBY DICK. I must go back and read MOBY DICK which I loved and also a complex read.

"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last" drew me to Sena Jetter Naslund's story as strongly as Herman Melville's opening line in Moby-Dick "Call me Ishmael." Ahab's Wife is a mid-19th century tale of a "young girl-wife's" survival and growth. Mrs. Captain Una Ahab, a title earned, adventure begins when puberty and eligible young men arrive while she is isolated on a lighthouse island. Una's journey off the island forces her to ponder questions of religious fate, divinity, motherhood, madness, cannibalism, slavery, bounty hunters, revenge, chauvinism, ship mates, soul mates, infant death, grief, widows with their husbands alive at sea, sea-law marriages and divorces, widow makers -black whales, white whales, sperm whales and the joys of life even after widowhood.
Instead of being fated as a spinster atop the grill work encircling the lighthouse lens, a figurehead aloft a whalers masthead or a sea wife pacing her widow-walk, Una survives on her strength of purpose. "I have found a way to wish till things happen" explains Una. "There was nothing abject about you," states Judge Lord "You had your purpose, your wish. Did you get your wish? Yes. That alone saves any human from abjectness. "In the old fairy tales, it is the strength of the wish that transforms life. The wish is itself the magic wand."

While mankind struggles with the strength of will, prayer, dreams, hopes, aspirations and wishes, Naslund teaches the reader through Una, how to imagine themselves out of tragedy. That alone is worth the read.

There is no excuse for this rambling mess of a book. The author, a professor, should have known better; the agent who somehow decided this was a story worth telling should have known better; the editor or editors who saw this as fit to be printed should have known better. Lots and lots of people fell asleep at the wheel when this one made it through.

The beginning is promising, yes. The author creates a great atmosphere for the reader, so we allow her to indulge a bit in over-wrtiting. The first warning sign that I saw was when Una decided to pass herself off as a boy. This came out of nowhere, with very little reason. It just seemed like the author needed her to get on that ship and she kind of made it happen. After all the pages and pages she spent detailing everything about Una's life so far, her quick, and unexplained decision to hop on board the ship was lazy, lazy writing. But then the book picks up a bit, so we forget about that. Until the last third of the book, when all attempts at plot are completely abandoned. One of the first rules of writing is that if there is a section in your manuscript that you can remove without affecting plot in some way, it SHOULD be removed. This book is filled with chapters of nothing. Of rambling nonsense. It reads like a fan-fiction that just happens to be written by a professor.

It is astounding to me that this was published. I could have understood the first half of the novel, but the rest is drivel. Don't bother with it. Seriously.

In Herman Melville’s classic tale Moby Dick, he refers briefly to the fact that Captain Ahab had a “girl-wife” and a son. Naslund has taken that short reference as a starting point to skillfully craft an adventure story, producing a novel that is interesting to read and filled with historically accurate detail. It introduces the reader to a courageous, kind, and intelligent young woman known as Una Spenser. Over the next more than 650 pages, Una tells us her life story, one in which Ahab is only one of a number of husbands. It begins with a seductive first sentence: “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last”. With such an intriguing beginning, readers cannot help but carry on and immerse themselves in her story.

Una grew up in rural Kentucky, but her mother, determined to protect her from her obsessively religious and violent father, sent her to live with her more liberal minded Aunt and Uncle who lived in an island lighthouse near New Bedford, Massachusetts. There she led an isolated but happy life and grew to love the sea. When she was sixteen she left the island and disguised as a cabin boy, hired herself out as an apprentice on a whaling ship with two young men who she cared about, each for different reasons. When the ship was rammed by a whale and sank Una, the two boys and several others were set adrift in a lifeboat on the open sea. Only Una and her two companions survived, living on the flesh of others to sustain themselves, an act which marked each of them for life. They were rescued by Captain Ahab on his whaling ship The Pequod, who at that point had not yet encountered the huge white whale that would come to haunt him.

Once aboard the Pequod, Una looses one of her companions and marries the other, who gradually descends into madness. Nevertheless she sticks by him faithfully and when Captain Ahab delivers the couple to Nantucket, Una tries to make a life there, integrating herself with the families in this seafaring community that welcomed them. Despite her efforts, her husband is restless and the marriage collapses as his angst ridden insanity defeats them both and he abandons her.

Una eventually marries Captain Ahab, the man who had saved them. He was already middle aged and much older than she, but the two share a deep and fulfilling love and settle in his large and comfortable home. When Ahab goes off on his whaling trip, Una befriends free thinkers, learned scientists and friendly shop keepers in town to help pass the time.

Una looses her first child while Ahab is off at sea but eventually conceives another son they name Justice. Ahab then leaves on his second whaling trip in their marriage but returns maimed, angry and delirious, having lost a leg to the mighty white whale known as Moby Dick. Una nurses him but the Captain, still recovering from his wounds, insists on setting off to sea once again, consumed with rage and a determination to get his revenge from the whale that has crippled him, a rage that was quickly spiraling into madness. His trip to sea and his vendetta against the whale ends badly and he never returns.

Una tries to make a life for herself in Nantucket but there are memories of her beloved husband everywhere and she eventually retreats with her son to a seaside cottage. She loses her grand home in Nantucket to a fire and later meets Ishmael, the lone survivor from the Pequod and marries him. The couple settle into a quiet life by the sea and have a daughter they call Felicity.

Una was a feminist, a woman who was forward thinking, interested in the world around her and able to hold her own with the more learned elite in Nantucket society. Despite the tragedy in her life Una also had good luck and experienced kindness from the people she met on her life journey, including a benevolent dwarf who was a bounty hunter and an escaped slave named Susan who she taught to read and write. Such kindness at times seemed unrealistic, but it did not mar the narrative to any considerable extent.

The book drags somewhat during the long periods when the Captain is at sea and Una waits for his return. Perhaps the author created this lag purposefully as she wanted the reader to experience the same long restless time that all seafaring wives endure as they await the return of their men from trips that lasted months and often years. These women were strong and independent, running their households without the traditional help afforded a wife and mother at the time. The absence of their husbands also had a bright side. It gave these women more independence and power than those with husbands at home. It was a life that suited Una, who was accustomed to being by herself and making her own decisions.

The narrative is filled with long philosophical discourses on a number of subjects, the result of Una’s restless questioning of accepted facts, a habit from her early years when she refused to blindly accept her fathers’ strict Methodist beliefs. From that time on she made an effort to meet and talk with interesting and intelligent people and to question what she learned and saw. There are interesting encounters with real life historical figures such as Margaret Fuller, Nathanial Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emmerson and astronomer Maria Mitchell. Una holds her own among these forward thinking people, able to think critically about issues of religion, slavery and the place of women in society.

Naslund’s narrative is beautifully written, rich with the details of what it was like to be at sea, on a whaling ship or at home waiting for a loved one. The descriptions of walking the cobblestone streets of Nantucket feel true and the reader gets a sense of what life was like living during that time.

I am embarrassed to say I have not yet read Melville’s novel Moby Dick, but I do not believe one needs to do so to enjoy this novel. It appears to have been designed to be read as an independent “stand alone” story about a beautiful, strong, self-assured woman who leads an adventurous and full life. She is a character with depth, someone the reader comes to care about and admire. It even led me to pick up a copy of Moby Dick where it sits in my book stash, waiting for my time and attention.

I really enjoyed this book. Sometimes I love a good, long novel so the story and characters keep going and going. The author does a great job creating rich, distinct characters and you can't help but to get wrapped up in their story. Great book.

this is painful so far

When I first picked up this book, I was intrigued, but I hesitated because I do not like imitative fiction. Make no mistake, this is not fan fiction or an attempt to pay homage to a great writer, but a modern writer with the chutzpah to think that she is as good as Melville. Even worse is her attempt to imitate him, a mistake.
Naslund might even be quite a good writer (albeit one in need of an editor who slices and dices), if she were not so imitative and derivative. She has imagination. She has the ability to capture a reader. She has a good plot (until she goes off the rails, begins to name drop the great intellectuals of New England and has Una meet the narrator of Moby Dick as he begins to 'write' the book). She even creates some interesting characters. She does not, however, create a world that stands by itself. Instead she is hobbled by her attachment (adoring devotion?) to a previous author, which cripples her tale and leaves the reader dissatisfied.
Ahab had a wife, but I very much doubt that the character Ahab, who wrestled with good and evil, chasing the very incarnation of evil across the seas, was a love-sick romeo who wooed his wife with all the characteristics of a hero from the pages of a romance novel. Naslund's Ahab is kind, understanding, loving, sexy, a good provider, unbelievably rich, etc.
Our protagonist (Una Spenser, Ahab's wife) is unbelievable, obsessed with the imperfections of humans and her own need to be forgiven for past transgressions (not sins, she is carefully framed as not-religious, but is always searching, so calling these transgressions sins would be too simple).
Perhaps Naslund's worst sin, however, is that she often tells the reader how to perceive the characters rather than portraying their characteristics. Thus, we are told that Una is fascinating, although our personal opinion (especially after 700 pages) may be quite different. I also could not shake the impression that the title and the attachment to Melville was simply an attempt to sell more copies of what might have been an obscure, over-written and under-selling novel.

This book felt like it took forever to read. And this is not the first time I've tried it. Yet, I was quite determined.

While reading this there were times I felt this was a 4 star book and times I felt it was a 2 star book and times I could not handle the narrator in the least and had to close this book and glare at it. But on the occasions that this tiny tome held my attention, it was very good. I'd give the examples of those moments but I don't want to include any spoilers.

I will say, I wanted more Ahab than this offered. Now, I've read Moby Dick more than once so I know he and his wife didn't have much time together but despite that I feel that there was a lot of time spent in frivolous other pursuits and the time she had with Ahab just a touch. This is perhaps just my reading experience. After all, I always liked Ahab.

Also, the ending was a little silly in my opinion. After Ahab the story just kind of circles the drain. (I do not say this for being a fan of the Ahab character, I say this because the story really just lost all its steam.)

Anyway, 3 stars for this wordy thing.

Moby Dick was such an odd book, this one makes a nice and easy to read companion. I'm not sure if I like how Ishmael was used, but I love the book.

This book would have been much better if it had been about half as long. It seemed like the author tried to cram in everything; every moral issue, every type of character, every famous person of the day, every story, fact or tidbit she came up with while doing her research and every single thought that might have passed through her main character’s head. I skimmed through a lot of the extraneous tangents, letters and discussions of philosophy but just about tossed out the book when I came to the chapter where the main character runs into Hawthorne in the woods and has an excruciating conversation where they squeezed out every possible meaning of a single sentence and in the end the whole encounter was totally unnecessary and had absolutely nothing to do with anything else in the book (I would have never survived as an English major). I persisted because it was a book club book and toward the end even the main story, which at first is a decent adventure, seems to run out of steam and putters along to the easily guessed conclusion.