Slow but steady wins the race… but not always?

This book is a fictionalized account of the life of John Franklin, the famous explorer of the Arctic, who died while trying to find the legendary Northwest Passage. Nadolny seems to have researched Franklin very thoroughly and stays mostly true to the facts, except attributing one additional dominant characteristic to him, and that is “slowness”. This fictional Franklin sees the world differently than other people, because his inner clock is delayed, which means that everything happens too fast for him and he reacts too late. Despite this seeming handicap he manages to join the navy and become an explorer.

What this slowness means exactly is hard to pin down, because although his peers and later also his subordinates often deride Franklin for it, Nadolny never treats it as an actual disability or handicap but an unexpected strength. Especially in the first half of the book he makes Franklin achieve some significant victories and heroic deeds because of it, which earns him respect and makes the naysayers shut up. It’s an odd case of a character’s heroization. However, then the arctic expeditions happen and his slowness doesn’t seem so much of a strength all of a sudden. During his first command he loses almost all of his men to starvation, exposure, and murder, and in the end one of his lieutenants has to save his life and the life of the remaining men.

So what does all this mean? I have no idea. If this book was written in praise of slowness and in contempt of the hurriedness of our time, it did not work for me at all. Why connect this to Franklin of all people? To make him more interesting or special? Franklin led a pretty special and interesting life in any case, one that easily lends itself to being the base for a ton of stories without adding entirely unrelated side issues, even if he as a person was maybe not all that interesting. Especially Franklin’s later life just does not fit into this narrative about the advantages of slowness at all.

Aside from the flawed premise, it is still not a bad book. Although the first part about Franklin’s youth drags a bit, it quickly picks up the pace, when he joins the navy, and becomes an engaging read that’s not easy to put down. It’s also very well written and researched, and Nadolny does a good job of describing the era and the rapid progress happening all around his protagonist. If you’re interested in Franklin and his time, I recommend it.