The Surfacing
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Morgan is second-in-command of the brig Impetus, dispatched in 1852 to the Arctic in search of Franklin's lost expedition. It is late in the year and the ice is closing in when Morgan, ensconced in this wholly masculine world, learns that the ship is carrying a stowaway - a woman. Pregnant with his child.
It is too late to turn back. The child will be born into this vast frozen wilderness. And Morgan must set out on a voyage of deliverance across a bleak expanse as shifting, stubborn and treacherous as human nature itself.
Cormac James was born in Cork, Ireland, and now lives in France. His first novel, Track and Field, was published in 2000.
'A remarkable achievement...A stylish novel, full of music and quiet control.' Colum McCann
'Extraordinary...Reading the book, I recalled the dramatic natural landscape of Jack London and the wild untamed seas of William Golding. Cormac James' writing is ambitious enough to be compared with either.' John Boyne
'Very assured, with a harsh poetic edge...powerful and compelling.' Rose Tremain
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his North American fiction debut, Irish-born novelist James draws on the real-life search for John Franklin's lost Arctic exhibition to explore the perils of life at sea, the rugged beauty of the Northwest Passage, and the transformative power of fatherhood. In the spring of 1850, the crew of the Impetus, one of several groups tasked with searching for Franklin's ship, as well as other lost search-party ships, stops at Greenland's Disko Island. There, Lt. Richard Morgan has a tryst with Kitty Rink, the sister of Greenland's Danish governor. Days after the ship's departure, Morgan, who has a wife back in Cork, Ireland, discovers that Rink has snuck on to the ship and is pregnant. After a failed attempt to leave Rink at another port, the crew presses on into the upper reaches of the Arctic. There, during the winter, the ship becomes lodged in a sea of ice, forcing Rink to give birth on board. For Morgan, who fears commitment, the entrance of his son, Thomas, sounds a "call to his better self" even as it infuses the task of returning home with new urgency. Though the novel drags in places, James's sharp prose and attention to detail, particularly to sounds (splintering ice sounds like "plates being popped"), leaves a lasting impression of this momentous journey.
