Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Far Tortuga

Rate this book
An adventure story and a deeply considered meditation upon the sea itself.

"Beautiful and original...a resonant and symbolical story of nine doomed men who dream of an earthly paradise as the world winds down around them." — Newsweek

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Loading interface...
Loading interface...

About the author

Peter Matthiessen

129 books827 followers
Peter Matthiessen is the author of more than thirty books and the only writer to win the National Book Award for both non-fiction (The Snow Leopard, in two categories, in 1979 and 1980) and fiction (Shadow Country, in 2008). A co-founder of The Paris Review and a world-renowned naturalist, explorer and activist, he died in April 2014.

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
411 (34%)
4 stars
443 (36%)
3 stars
229 (19%)
2 stars
80 (6%)
1 star
39 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
Profile Image for James Murphy.
982 reviews3 followers
February 8, 2019
Far Tortuga is one of my favorite novels. I've read it many times and will continue to read it. It's a simple story in which little happens except that men, without really understanding it as such, confront nature and existence and the unwavering progress of time. It's April of a year in the mid-1960s. It's the time of turtle fishing in the banks and reefs of the Caribbean along the coast of Central America. The run-down schooner Lillias Eden leaves Grand Cayman with a mongrel crew of 9 representing every shade of black and white Caribbean. The novel is about that voyage. It's remarkable for its narrative simplicity which manages to incorporate these men in the basic simplicity (if we choose to think of it in that way) of existence itself.

It's equally remarkable for its spare text which so vividly conveys the natural world around these men and what they say in it. Most of the novel is dialogue, and is interestingly rendered by Matthiessen in the island patois actually spoken. There isn't much for the crew to do on the voyage to the turtle grounds and between stations within the scattering of reefs where they fish. So they talk. There is constant chatter about the intricacies of turtle fishing, of lives spent on the sea handling ships and boats, of the petty rivalries of men and families. This is the random, aimless talk of men dependent on the knowledge contained in such idle chatter, gossip, superstition, legend and stories, and accepted wisdom. Change is a theme--they're aware of modern times seen against days now gone when the fishing and their lives were seen to be better.

Threaded through the dialogue Matthiessen has given us on almost every page sketches which indicate such things as time of day, weather conditions, the chop of the sea, the shine of stars. Matthiessen makes the reader aware of the crew's immersion in nature. On a page might simply be a man's name. Another page might carry a smudge of ink and the name of a star. Page 386 contains a line and the single word "horizon." On page 327 the pattern of descriptive words forms the figure of a man, and a poem.

These men pit their experience and their collective histories against the indifference of nature. They have a limited array of weapons with which to fight the hopelessness they feel. They use their individual strengths, they sing songs, and they rely on companionship or stark competition. But they're no better than the turtles they trap. They're born, they live, they work, eat, reproduce, have their separate sensibilities, and they die. If they discern any meaning in their existence, it's only a glimpse and hardly encouraging. They have only the world they inhabit, and it's killing them. This is a novel about men engaged in doing what they must because it's all they know to do. It's about human destiny and existential despair on the despairing sea.

One can imagine the crew of the Lillias Eden looking up at the uncounted numbers of stars in the Caribbean night sky. The vast display would, in my opinion, represent Far Tortuga's true value better than the Goodreads system. This is one of the most beautiful novels in the English language.

I love this novel. I 1st read it about 1975 and have frequently returned to it. And here I am rereading it again for the umpteenth time in 2019. I felt my high regard for this novel was kind of authenticated and my spirit made glad a few years ago when I read somewhere that Matthiessen considered this book--and think about the many he wrote, including the powerful and popular At Play in the Fields of the Lord or The Snow Leopard or Shadow Country--to be his favorite. I'm enjoying it again.

Finished again 8 Feb 19. What a beautiful novel.
Profile Image for Jeff Jackson.
Author 4 books502 followers
August 12, 2016
Peter Matthiessen isn't known as an avant garde writer, but FAR TORTUGA is a deeply experimental novel that deserves to be discussed with the best of Coover, Barthleme, Hawkes, etc. You first notice how the beautifully designed pages are unusually arranged and filled with yawning white spaces. The narration is radically separate from the dialogue, offering no commentary and supplying only sparse descriptive passages. Its an effective approach that immerses you in the vivid conversations of the Grand Caymans' fishermen as they sail in search of green turtles while also letting you experience the ocean around them stripped of all sentimentality. It expertly evokes the inhuman qualities of nature.

The novel was partly born out of Matthiessen's study of Buddhism and the zen aesthetic can be felt throughout this novel in its moments of purposeful detachment and restrained poetic gesture. FAR TORTUGA is also an earthy book, full of raw humor, concerned with sailing and fishing practicalities, and peopled by broken and boisterous characters struggling to figure out their place in a rapidly shifting society and global economy. As their fishing journey unfolds, the story takes on a hallucinatory cast, the sailors fending off superstitions, trying to navigate more clearly the hazy horizon line that demarcates life and death.
Profile Image for Christopher.
674 reviews259 followers
December 30, 2013
Unlike anything else I've read; exudes the unmistakable aura of a forgotten classic; completely wonderful; transcendent. Anything that begins in the following manner must be something special and important...

Daybreak.

At windward passage, four hundred miles due east, the sun is rising. Wind east-northeast, thirty-eight knots, with gusts to forty-five: a gale.

Black waves, wind-feathered. White birds, dark birds.

The trade winds freshen at first light, and the sea rises in long ridges, rolling west.

Sunrise at longitude 76, 19 degrees north latitude.

Sunrise at longitude 77.

Sunrise at the lesser Caymans. Horizon rises from horizon. To the westward, Grand Cayman is gray; its high cumulus, visible to migrant birds a hundred miles away, is a gray-pink.

The sun, coming hard around the world: the island rises from the sea, sinks, rises, holds.

[...]

Sunrise at Newlands and Careening Place and Booby Cay.

Sunrise at Savanna. A lone dog in the road, stiff-legged. Poinsettia and jasmine, low white walls.

Green parrots cross the sunburst to the mango trees. Light polishes gray-silver cabin sides, glows in the bolls of the wild cotton, shines the dun flanks of a silken cow in pastures of rough guinea grass; a gumbo limbo tree, catching up sun in red translucent peals of shedding bark, glows on black burned-over ground between gray jutting bones of ocean limestone.

New sun on a vermilion fence. Breadfruit and tamarind.

Cock crow.

Sunrise at Spotts Bay and Matilda Pond. In a woman's tongue tree, the dawn wind passes and racketing pods fall still.

Sunrise at Prospect, on South Sound, abandoned since the hurricane of '32. The Prospect Church decays in an old orchard, grown over now be seaside wood; the roof of the church is wind-slotted, battered by gales. Lizards scatter in the leaves and sun-spots that stray in the church door, and a hermit crab, snapped shut, rocks minutely in the silence.

In the graveyard behind the falling church grows oleander and white frangipani. On the ironshore below, incoming seas burst through black fissures in the rock, and black crabs scatter.


Matthiessen is a master of writing about nature. His world is beautiful but cruel, shadowy and sublime.

Far Tortuga takes place almost exclusively at sea, on board the Lillias Eden, a turtling vessel in the Caribbean Sea, captained by the Ahabesque Raib Avers and his shabby crew. The author throws the reader into the midst of the sailoring life without a life jacket; it's rough work making sense of much of the dialogue, not least because of its use of dialect (and most of the book is dialogue, without direct indication of the speaker).

Dass it. All kinds of birds and rats and wildcats, jaguars, y'know, and dogs, and what dey calls ringtails--all dem vermin comes out de swamps and jungles dat lays just behind dat beach, and wild hogs, too, dey say--all of dat is swarmin de beaches, and de few dat slips past de vermin got to scromble through dat big surf dere, which is one of de worst in all de world, and dem dat gets past de breakers, dey got to deal with all de sharks and fish in de deep water, and de mon- o'-war birds pickin at'm from de top when dey surfaces to get dere breath. In de monin' time when dose young ones dat come out from de night is restin in de water, dat mornin de sky is littered with birds. Mon-o'-war birds. De boobies don't grob dem so much, but de mon-o'-war do. Dey millions of birds dere. Dat mornin de sea is covered with baby turtle and de sky is black with birds, just black with mon-o'-war birds, swoopin down. Dey is very few dat gets away. Oh, very few!


But this book is one of the great books that rewards according to the labor put forth. From its first page, Far Tortuga boldly asserts its potency and abundance; the reader shall reap much for her effort.
Profile Image for Joy D.
2,276 reviews259 followers
June 23, 2020
Story of a sea turtle fishing voyage in the Caribbean from the coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras to the Grand Caymans and Tortugas. The crewmen relate memories of past fishing adventures, ships, captains, storms, and catches. They occasionally encounter other ships and crews. The ship’s captain is set on maintaining traditions, though the industry is changing. His obsessions play a critical role in the outcome of the journey.

The structure of this book is pared down to the essentials. It is told in an unusual format – mostly dialogue, almost like a play, with no speaker’s name, no “he said,” and groupings of words with substantial white space in between. A limited amount of scenery is described in prose. The dialogue reflects the dialects of the multiple nationalities of the sailors. It is occasionally difficult to follow and to tell which sailor is speaking. A helpful map, ship’s manifest, and several drawings of the decks are included.

The narrative provides a sense of the sailing life, and how the sailors gossip and recall old sea stories. We only know the characters by what they say and do. The reader is never privy to their thoughts. I am not aware if this book has ever been adapted to a stage play or an operetta, but I think it would work well. This book definitely will not be everyone’s cup of tea. It will appeal to those that enjoy experimental literature and spare, directly told stories.
Profile Image for Ken.
Author 3 books1,044 followers
August 3, 2016
This book scores high for technical merit and artistic ambition. It just wasn't my kind of book. Written in the vernacular of sailors (yes, and a few pirates) of the Caribbean, it took some adjustments at first. Very much in the strain of Twain's Jim in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

What disappointed me was the huge amount of dialogue. Some of Matthiessen's descriptive flourishes waxed poetic, and I would've enjoyed indulging in more of THAT, but no. This is a talky book, character-driven. And what a motley lot they are!

The other disappointment was how little happens. Boat floats around the sea so author can develop characters of a bunch of REAL characters. One yearned for a little action and a little plot. That one being me.

But I made it. Which is more than can be said for a lot of the turtles...
61 reviews5 followers
November 17, 2007
Read this years ago, wound up assigning it to my Literature & Ecology of the Sea class. Definitely not for the faint of heart due to Mathiessen's use of a variety of graphic & textual "experiments" including writing all the dialog in a sort of "you are right there listening to it" patois (one student commented quite correctly that the book is more like a play than a novel) Still & all, it has some of the best descriptions of actually being on a schooner at sea that I can think of
Profile Image for Jessica.
Author 6 books210 followers
March 26, 2008
Wow! I am so pleased to see so many 5 star reviews on GR of this novel...I was so awed by it (to use that overused word) when I read it in the 80's...so very beautiful, haunting, lyrical...and incredibly innovative. But why did no one ever talk about it? Teach it in an "experimental fiction" course? I don't believe I've ever met anyone else (in person) who read it, let alone loved it...and now I see all these reviews on Goodreads...hey! I'm not a nutcase after all! Or if I am, I'm in good company!
Profile Image for Ben Serviss.
Author 1 book6 followers
August 21, 2014
Imagery jumbled out of order. Flipping the page and furrowed brow. Sentences dance to their own rhythm, guiding themselves nowhere.

random words in arranged order conveying nothing

closing book

closed.
Profile Image for Patrick.
27 reviews13 followers
February 24, 2009
I gave this one four stars instead of five because, like some other readers here, I struggled a little bit with matching up the dialogue with the characters. Often times you arent sure who is speaking and in some cases, who is thinking. I found that the best way to get around this is to just give up on trying to figure it out and just try and go with it. Other than that I have to say that I really enjoyed the layout and the unique form that Matthiessen employs. I dont think a lesser writer could have pulled it off as well but Matthiessen is very talented. The way he describes the world of the Carribean is absolutely beautiful. You can almost smell the sea and feel the bobbing of the ship deck beneath your feet.
One of the big surprises for me was my evolving opinion about the character of Captain Raib. At first I found him egomaniacal, hard-headed and completely out of his mind. Although these characteristics still applied to him towards the end, I found myself drawn to him and repulsed by most of his crew. He seemed to be the only one aboard with a sense of honor (which isnt saying much considering the overall quality of his crew). Also, I dont know about anyone else but the descriptions of the captured and dying turtles were heartbreaking (especially the gasping). I almost had to stop reading in a few spots because of this. I usually dont react that strongly to things like that in a book but it really made me sad and somewhat resentful of the turtlers themselves. Perhaps it was Matthiessens vivid writing that allowed me to imagine so clearly the suffering of these creatures.

Overall a great book with really cool dialogue and an engrossing story. Gives a fascinating glimpse into a lost way of life and also draws attention to the abyssmal state of our oceans. Kudos to Matthiessen for his efforts in this regard.
Profile Image for Daren.
1,391 reviews4,440 followers
January 14, 2017
Nine men leave Grand Cayman in the Caribbean Sea, aboard a run down schooner, on a turtling voyage, hoping to make some money. We learn about the nine men from the conversations they have - they are at sea, there is little else to do while they travel to the fishing grounds. There are simple relationships, based on many things - friendship being more rare than mutual dislike, distrust and animosity. They are simple men, from poor backgrounds, who have little and offer less. They seek green turtles, from their traditional fishing grounds - those of their grandfathers, but there are so few turtles being caught...

There isn't much to talk about in terms of plot without launching straight into spoilers.

This is a strange novel - experimental one other reviewer called it, and perhaps that is the best description. As well as using the words to convey a story, it also uses the space on the page. The text is not set out conventionally. The line spaces vary, the text starts in different locations along the line, there are sketches and smudges of ink. The narration is minimal, the dialogue more meaningful, written in island patois (but quite readable when you get adjusted to it).

I expect this is a novel which, when read again, gives something different, or something more.
For now, I sit on the fence with 3 stars.
Profile Image for Kelly Daniels.
Author 2 books20 followers
April 14, 2014
I've read this book twice over the years, and I thought I'd recommend it on the occasion of the death of its author. It happens to be my favorite Matthiessen novel, and it's his personal favorite too, as he mentioned on a Fresh Air interview a few years ago. It's a simple story of a crew of Caribbean turtle fishermen--characters in the best sense of that word--out on a seasonal hunt in an odd ship caught awkwardly in a transition from sail power to diesel. It's more or less the same plot as Moby-Dick, and also like Moby-Dick, it's intensely experimental.

Published in 1975, during a period of "post modern" excess in American literary fiction--that is, highly self-conscious works of cartoonish parody, wacky academic prose, absurd or nonexistent plots, and so on--Far Tortuga went the other direction. A practicing Zen Buddhist throughout the second half of his life, Matthiessen writes every word of Tortuga as if it were a meditation. White space plays an important role in this beautiful novel, as do little Zen sketches of the weather, and differing font sizes to help us sort through the many voices of his characters. He employs no dialog tags and only one metaphor throughout the entire book. And yet, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more sensually evocative and thrilling adventure tale anywhere.

It's one of America's great novels. Mark my words, someday this book will be widely read in literature classes (if the human species doesn't wipe itself out first by ignoring Matthiessen's message of respect for the physical Earth). Do yourself a favor and read it before some yahoo makes a terrible movie about it.
Profile Image for Hal Brodsky.
736 reviews5 followers
July 12, 2022
This gorgeous book is unlike anything I have ever read with my closest experience being the reading of "Wind, Sand and Stars" by Saint-Exupery, although that was more a collection of essays, not a single work of fiction.

I wish I could give it 10 stars.

Almost a lyrical poem told in dialogue (Matthiessen does not use quotation marks and never reveals who is speaking) and very brief descriptions of the immediate environment, it is the story of the voyage of a Cayman turtling boat inadequately powered both by motor and sail (its captain/owner ran out of funds during its transformation to diesel) and therefore stuck between modern days and old times (like its crew, like the Caribbean Island Nations, like threatened nature itself). The crew consists of the Captain, "two drunks and five idiots," one a reputed murdered and another a student of voodoo.

The voyage is NOT a smooth one.

I cannot recommend this book enough.

One note: I have met a number of people who gave up on this book due to "confusion" brought on by trying to figure out who is speaking. BIG MISTAKE. The crew is speaking. It is often like a Greek Chorus eventhough they take turns speaking. The reader learns about the individual crew members and begins to care for them as individuals by what is being said. Just relax and read.
Profile Image for Old Man JP.
1,119 reviews53 followers
November 1, 2020
I have to admit it took me awhile to warm up to this one, but as I kept reading I increasingly began to appreciate what an amazing book it actually was. This is a very experimental book by Matthiessen that is quite poetic at times, almost becoming free verse in spots, and has very abstract spacing between sentences and paragraphs occasionally. It is very different from anything else I've read by Matthiessen but gave me even more admiration for his work. Much of it is told through dialog that is written in a very heavy Cayman Island dialect between the crewmen on a turtle fishing schooner. The book is really a work of art that I'm going to have to read again now that I know what to expect, since I wasn't in the right frame of mind when I began it.
Profile Image for 🐴 🍖.
399 reviews25 followers
Read
May 16, 2019
awesome, both in the "idk how you'd ever even begin to write this" sense & the "i wanna rent a bullhorn and tell everyone to read it" sense. just, like, mind-bogglingly immersive (not an ocean pun); not that i've ever longed to be on a doomed turtling expedition but there's something so satisfying about how fully realized it all is, w/ only fragmentary dialogue & some stage directions & charcoals of the sun & moon as material. (this was another that t-pynch blurbed btw; they shared an agent but i'm confident it wasn't a pity-blurb situation.) should be a werner herzog movie, tho he would prob make the cast actually row across the caribbean w/o water, so perhaps it's for the best
Profile Image for Janet.
55 reviews1 follower
June 4, 2014
This book is described as a novel but it was more like a poetic meditation about life on a turtle boat in the Caribbean. It is a book you can read with interruptions. There isn't a plot that carries you along but the writing is beautiful and you can imagine being on the boat with those men or even being the turtle.

Profile Image for Jeff.
Author 7 books40 followers
December 4, 2009
The clipped, present-tense style may have been groundbreaking in 1975, but today it reads like an overlong screenplay. Another misfire: the thick patois of the Caribbean characters, tediously rendered through obfuscatory misspelled dialogue.
Profile Image for Елвира .
433 reviews74 followers
Read
November 22, 2020
Unfortunately goes to the "not read until the end" shelf.
I really hate it when this happens, though time is precious and there are so many other books out there...
Profile Image for Jonathan.
13 reviews
August 11, 2015
This novel feels like reportage, which it is in a sense; it was drawn from PM's time in the Caribbean researching an article on green turtle fishing for the New Yorker. The narration, particularly describing the natural beauty and peril of the cays and the sea, sounds like something written by a white American nature writer. The dialogue, in dialect, sounds like anything but. The dialogue is not delivered in a patronizing way - "behold these savage men" - but rather in a careful, painstaking, at times dreadfully unjudgmental way.

The novel is a narration of the death of a proud and rather unpleasant culture being replaced by tourism. It does not leave one excessively sad at what died out there in the reefs, per se, but certainly at what replaced it, and the catastrophic natural cost of human "progress".

I binge-read the novel in a weekend. This confuses me, as, graceful passages of nature aside, it was one of the most consistently unpleasant pieces of fiction I've read, up there with 'Ship of Fools' by Katherine Anne Porter. Horrible people doing horrible things according to the logic of their own constitutions, in pursuit of the harvest of creatures that everybody aboard loves and dreads to kill.

The style, which seems to throw a lot of people off, was perhaps the reason I couldn't put it down. The use of whitespace, pictographs, fragments radically opens up the claustrophobia of life aboard of the Eden. I much appreciated the spareness and the way the dialogue was left to fend for itself.

Only those with strong constitutions and desires to know a world that has evaporated need apply. But I expect they will not be disappointed.
Profile Image for Marie.
19 reviews2 followers
February 22, 2009
OK, this, the 3rd Peter M. book I tried really surprised me. What a wonderfully engaging mariner's tale. I love this one and feel Peter M. did a wonderful job telling this story. Having spent some time on a shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico myself, many years ago, I quite enjoyed this one. However, it took several pages for me to get used to reading the dialect as it is written but that really added to the feeling of being there with the nine men onboard the boat and the perils they found themselves in. I won't give away the plot but it is a well told tale of the sea, of the men who dare to go there and the price they pay.
Just be prepared for a UNIQUE reading experience from the Jamaican/Carribean dialect("No, mon! Sprat bird! Dat one dere is called de egg bird cause dem goddom Jamaicans theft de eggs of it.")to the way the text is laid on the page and the exquisite way Matthiessen decribes the water, the events and the storms;
Exquisit. I won't read another Peter Matthiessen, I believe I would only be dissappointed after my enloyment of Far Tortuga. Read it if you don't mind working through the dialect - soon becomes easy to follow because of the story. I could not put this one down.
Profile Image for Laura Bernardino.
3 reviews3 followers
February 13, 2020
Far Tortuga is one beautifully written piece of literature. It is one of those books that inspires the mind, is good for the soul and lifts the heart up. Its writing style is also new and refreshing, unlike anything I have seen before.
However, both the writing style and the language can be slightly challenging; but once one gets into the book and used to its prose, the words start rolling, the pages flipping, and it's difficult to put it down.
It is not a book filled with action, killing, suspense, etc.; it is more slow-paced and in many ways recreates the sea and the surroundings of the characters. Written to mimic Caribbean English and the way sailors spoke, it can be hard at first but soon one starts to hear while reading, as if the Captain was commanding his crew in the next room.
It is a book worth experiencing and, though it may not be for all readers, it is still a valuable piece to get acquainted with.
Profile Image for Ryan.
27 reviews2 followers
July 10, 2008
A novel that relies heavily on visual representation and page layout. Dialogue appears untagged - and appears almost like a screenplay. Pauses within speech are shown in space, the ship's manifest is reproduced on page, and there is a diagram of the ship (rather than a verbal description). Days, and time of day, are shown by graphic depiction of the sun and moon. What words compose a man? Matthessien arranges his description of Vemon in the shape of a man late in the novel.

Overall it is a fun book - a little difficult to follow before you know the characters - a book that took me back to the days when I eagerly read Robert Louis Stevenson and his adventure tales. Definitely recommended.
Profile Image for Spiros.
874 reviews25 followers
October 3, 2019
Nine men set out to sea from the Cayman Islands in a decrepit schooner, the Lillias Eden, which has been newly fitted with diesel engines. The crew is as ragtag as the ship: old Captain Raib, his teenage son, the grizzled mate, a steady veteran sailor, an alcoholic crew member, a disaffected crew member, a Honduran, an engineer who comes from somewhere in the Caribbean, and a stowaway. Their mission is to catch turtles off the Miskita Coast of Nicaragua. The narrative follows the men in their slow, erratic pursuit of the turtles, as they form and reform cliques and affinities amongst themselves, which are informed by subtle gradations of race and class. The effect is claustrophobic, with nerves of the crew balanced on a knife's edge as the voyage is faced by increasing hardships.
Profile Image for Kafka.
67 reviews2 followers
March 18, 2018
I have by now read this book twice. Its simplicity keeps me coming back to it, always hungry to revisit certain scenes and dialogues in it. Like other reviewers have mentioned, at heart it's an exceedingly simple story of a failed turtling voyage, but Matthiessen is striving here for a narrative that does not need complexity of plot to be meaningful. The complexity resides instead in what isn't said, but always implied: the unending march of "progress" and modernity, and the extremely fragile nature of both human and non-human life. These twin themes dictate Matthiessen's stance, and the end result is one of the least ideologically motivated literary masterpieces I've ever read.
Profile Image for Joseph Wallace.
Author 53 books62 followers
December 19, 2010
Talk about your love-it-or-hate-it books! Many find this experimental novel completely impenetrable, but I thought it was heartbreaking and riveting. The book's design, featuring inkblot-like illustrations, poetic arrangements of words on the page, and impressionistic dialog among the Caribbean turtle fishermen who are the focus of the story, cast a spell on me I found it hard to shake. Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Sheppard  Hobgood.
69 reviews1 follower
May 1, 2013
One of my favorite books. I've read it twice. I'll read it again soon, but first I'll treat myself to Peter Matthiessen's Shadow Country. It's a re-write of the Watson books. It's close to a thousand pages long and every page a pleasure. The way Mr. Matthiessen plays with the English language's multiple dialects is a treat. I'll take my time and now and then I'll read aloud so I can hear the syllables turn into magic words. Matthiessen's feeling for nature is epic.
Profile Image for Alex V..
Author 4 books18 followers
June 2, 2014
This one is slow-going because of the depth of the writing, style, and sea on which the story takes place. in that bend of time while actually reading it, it's like getting telegrams from God relayed by Caribbean turtle fishermen. So I guess it is worth the work.

Update: worth it. The last quarter is humanity's rotten vessel sinking into the black of the universe, written in blood on the sails. Maybe the best ending to a book ever.
Profile Image for Roger.
69 reviews2 followers
September 12, 2010
This is really one of the great American written novels of any time, full of amazing images of the ocean, what's on it and under it, and the lives of people who sail and shuffle between landfalls of the Caribbean. Full of poetry and brilliance. This is an important book about humans and destiny. I recently re-read parts of this great book and am still amazed by its power and architecture.
Profile Image for yvette managan.
7 reviews3 followers
June 25, 2007
Metthiessen uses words like no one else in the world. They are beautiful - utterly beautifdul. It takes a little while to get used to the rhythm of the language, but once you find it, the lyrical cadence is unforgettable.
Profile Image for Charles.
Author 41 books271 followers
February 25, 2009
A fascinating book. At times I wasn't sure I liked it. At other times I found it amazingly compelling. I've decided at last that I liked it quite a bit. This one is fiction.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.