A cautionary tale which, for all the fantastical elements, sounds terribly relevant to and important for the world we are living in.Īnd what a tale – and what a world – it is! Whales who build ships around themselves from wood salvaged from human ships, who wield their own harpoons. Opening with that echo of the famous first line of Moby-Dick, Bathsheba is telling her tale as a cautionary warning, a plea, a prophecy.
So, when I heard that Ness had taken Moby-Dick and re-imagined it from the whales’ point of view – in fact inverted the narrative in the same way that the novella’s title inverts our perspective which is deeply unsettling – I was expecting something fantastic. I know that Moby-Dick is a bit of a marmite novel and people either love or hate it but I love it! Epic and mythic and haunting full of characters that are Shakespearean and vivid, poetic and lyrical and visceral. How did I not notice when it was released? I mean, I love Patrick Ness – The Chaos Walking Trilogy was magnificent, A Monster Calls was exceptional and pretty much my most recommended book ever! – and I adore Moby-Dick. Oh my goodness, this novella was extraordinary! A name, I hoped, that would be free of prophecy, free of the burden of a future placed upon it, free of any destiny that would tear it from my hands and destroy worlds. It is not my name, but the name I use for this story.
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