That’s the way it is in life. You let go of what is beautiful and unique. You pursue something new and don’t even know that the wind of your own running is the thief.
The heroine of this 1999 NYT Notable Book of the Year is forever losing that which is beautiful and unique. Una flees a tyrannical father for the loving refuge of extended family in a lighthouse, only to discard that idyll for adventure. Disguised as a cabin boy aboard a whaler, she finds not one but two soul mates, only to lose them to madness following a shipwreck. Rescued by Ahab, she then goes from abused and abandoned spouse to a life of bliss as Mrs. Ahab, only to lose him to the white whale that proves her widow-maker. Along the way she befriends an escaped slave, a dwarf bounty-hunter, and Transcendalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller. She goes from homeless to mistress of a mansion. She loses one baby only to raise a son destined for the seafaring occupation that repeatedly proves her undoing. As her fortunes crest and fall, she travels from Kentucky to New Bedford and parts unknown, spends an inordinate amount on the widow’s walk, and grows intellectually and morally to emerge stronger than every man in her life. It is a lonely and depressing journey.
This beautifully written book could have been so great, and it nearly was. The first three-hundred pages had me so enthralled that I flew through them. Then, like a lifeboat in the doldrums, I drifted through the second half like a witness to a tragic shipwreck, floating from one depressing denouement to another with the specter of cannibalism an ever-present nightmare. What promised to be one of my favorite novels ultimately wound up being the most frustrating I have ever read.