"The North Water" by Ian McGuire
2 minutes to read — 278 words
Ian McGuire’s novel The North Water is a story about whaling. That alone invites comparisons to Moby Dick, and, indeed, both are gritty, realistic tales about adventures on nineteenth century whalers. But the stories are very different. The North Water is told in the third person and the present tense (which, combined with the graphic descriptions of violence and gore, has prompted comparisons to Cormac McCarthy).
Our protagonist is the Irish doctor Patrick Sumner, who served as an army surgeon during the Indian Rebellion in 1857.