The arctic is all the rage right now what with The Terror being out on tv and then there was that (bad) novel North Water a little while ago and people love writing about it. The Antarctic doesn’t get the same love for a few reasons I can think of. One, there’s not express reason to go there except research and adventure. At least in the North, you can look for shipping routes and people live there and it’s connected to Canada. Also, the Antarctic […]
Not a vile book, but…..
Maybe a British person can explain to me who Beryl Bainbridge is. I mean this in an earnest way because she’s unknown known quantity in my general understanding of British culture in the last 50 years. She was nominated for the Booker Prize five times and yet, no one seems to like her novels. This one has a shockingly low 2.77 on Goodreads. She’s been labeled as a “Greatest 50 since 1945” but hasn’t written a seminal work. And! All this should add up to […]
It’s about more than the sinking of the Titanic
This novel, published in 1996 and winner of the Whitbread Prize (shortlisted for the Booker), is set on the Titanic’s fateful voyage, and it is about loss, but not just the loss of those who set sail. Every Man for Himself is about the loss of love, the passing of an old world, and the painful birth of the new one as exemplified by our 22-year-old narrator. Morgan has known both deprivation and privilege, having had a foot in both worlds. Yet, he is not […]