Whalefall: A Novel

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Suspenseful and cinematic, Whalefall is an “astoundingly great” (Gillian Flynn, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about a young man who has given up on life…only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places. Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Jay’s internal monologue reveals his struggle to make sense of the conflict between the father he knew and the father he believed he ought to have. In that context I also considered a comparison with Jeff Lemire’s 2012 graphic novel Underwater Welder. I was so impressed by Kraus’ work co-writing with del Toro that I read Kraus’ 2011 novel Rotters and very much enjoyed that as well.

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It's the story of Jay growing up being constantly drilled on ocean facts by his dad, nearly to the exclusion of everything else. Scuba diving is used as a metaphor that effectively conveys Jay’s journey into the depths of his emotions, his fight to come to the surface and the epiphanies that occur along the way. When the whale swallows the squid, Jay is sucked into its mouth and swallowed, landing in the first of four stomachs.With nothing but his wits, the contents of the whale's stomach and his father's voice in his head, Jay’s battle for survival begins. Struggling with closure to his father’s death by suicide out at sea, Jay is forced to reconcile with these problems if he has any hope of escape. Andy Weir’s The Martian, for its minute-by-minute account of survival, and the movie Gravity, which is how I wanted Whalefall to feel — like the protagonist is fighting the odds at a cosmic level. What You Need to Know: I think the only thing readers will want to know before heading in, apart from anything you can glean from the synopsis, is to not be intimidated by its 300+ page count.

Whalefall Relates a Primal Oceanic Fear Come True - Gizmodo Whalefall Relates a Primal Oceanic Fear Come True - Gizmodo

The rest of this suspenseful, claustrophobic tale speeds by as Jay discovers he has only an hour’s worth of air — not to mention how to figure out how to escape the whale itself. So while Jay had a love of the ocean imprinted in him early, it got sullied by how he came to connect the water to his father. Jay needs a win (cue examples of every single thing Jay's done wrong to foreshadow how badly he needs to now do something right. One of the best releases of the year, Daniel Kraus’s writing is a white whale any reader would be lucky to capture.But as problematic as Mitt’s eccentricities are to the family, he is never overtly abusive and his love for his son and family is apparent. So we get whiny young adult thoughts instead of grown-ass man thoughts, and that is an extra heap of something I did NOT want when I started this book. Kraus' writing has always been able to capture my imagination, but that is especially so with this book.