Whalefall
Ratings55
Average rating3.8
"Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool's errand-to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it's a long shot, but Jay feels it's the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad's death by suicide the previous year. The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid's tenacles and drawn into the whale's mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out-one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale."--
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For a book that markets itself as being scientific and based in realism, I couldn't help myself from laughing at the ridiculousness throughout. Also, the weird shifting from first person to third person and narration is very off-putting, amplified by the author's obsession with reiteration and repeating phrases for emphasis—seriously, even Drake & Josh wouldn't put so much emphasis...EMPHASIS. Not sure how Gillian Flynn and Stephan Graham Jones gave this such appraisal.
Well. I was really looking forward to this book, but, I didn't like it. I went into it hoping for a good atmospheric thriller about a person trapped in a whale trying to survive, and while that did happen, the majority of the story was focused on the past relationship between the main character and his father. The chapters were all super short, and by that I mean less than a paragaph in a lot of chapters, and even just a single sentence for many of them, particularly towards the end. And a lot of the “mood” of relationship was told via the voices in his head which were always ((bracketed)), and the sound effects of the whale which were EMPHASISED in all caps. And it just made it a tedious read for me. Looking at the other reviews though a lot of people loved this book, so please don't take my word for it, this might be something you enjoy, but for me it fell very short of good.
Not sure how to rate this one. I picked it up because of the “hype” and didn't really look into what it was so for the first 15/20% of the book I had no idea what was going on.
The trapped aspect of it wasn't bad but the part about the father and the family drama just fell very flat for me and I often found myself just wanting the story to move along already. Ultimately, I didn't hate it, but I just didn't really care for it either. There's a lot of back and forth in time which I really couldn't stand. Some of the characters' idiosyncrasies were kinda funny and I think that characterization was really one of the strongest aspects of this book.
That being said, I can see why someone would love this book and it's not a bad book by any means. I think it's time for me to admit that Kraus might just be one of these authors that aren't for me so take this review with a grain of salt.
Neutral 2.5 rounded up.
