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Ahab's Wife: Or, The Star-Gazer: A Novel Paperback – October 3, 2000

by Sena Jeter Naslund (Author)

4.2 1,868 ratings

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From the opening line--"Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last"--you will know that you are in the hands of a masterful storyteller and in the company of a fascinating woman hero. Inspired by a brief passage in Melville's Moby-Dick, where Captain Ahab speaks passionately of his young wife on Nantucket, Una Spenser's moving tale "is very much Naslund's own and can be enjoyed independently of its source." (Newsday)

The daughter of a tyrannical father, Una leaves the violent Kentucky frontier for the peace of a New England lighthouse island, where she simultaneously falls in love with two young men. Disguised as a boy, she earns a berth on a whaling ship where she encounters the power of nature, death, and madness, and gets her first glimpse of Captain Ahab. As Naslund portrays Una's love for the tragically driven Ahab, she magnificently renders a real, living marriage and offers a new perspective on the American experience. Immediately immersed in this world, the reader experiences a brilliantly written, vibrant, uplifting novel--a bright book of life.

Ahab's Wife was a main selection of the Book of the Month Club, chosen by Time magazine as one of the top five novels of 1999, selected by Book Sense as one of the top five books of the year, chosen by the New York Times as a Notable Book of 1999, and chosen as a Best Book by Publishers Weekly.

Ahab's Wife is being reprinted in Australia and England, translated into German, Hebrew, Spanish and Portuguese.

Print length

688 pages
Language

English
Publisher

HarpPeren
Publication date

October 3, 2000
Dimensions

5.11 x 1.11 x 8.11 inches
ISBN-10

0688177859
ISBN-13

978-0688177850
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"An intense treat, powerfully written, Ahab's Wife is one of the best contemporary novels I have read in years." -- --Louise Erdrich

"Beautifully written. Lyrical...alluring and wise." -- --Los Angeles Times

"This is truly a grand...adventure story whose heroine survives on her intellect and courage." -- --Newsday

About the Author

Sena Jeter Naslund is a cofounder and program director of the Spalding University (Louisville) brief-residency MFA in Writing, where she edits The Louisville Review and Fleur-de-Lis Press. A winner of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association Fiction award, she is the author of eight previous works of fiction, including Ahab's Wife, a finalist for the Orange Prize. She recently retired from her position as Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Louisville.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarpPeren (October 3, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 688 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0688177859
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0688177850
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.11 x 1.11 x 8.11 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #604,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #960 in Classic Action & Adventure (Books)
- #14,586 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #29,983 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.2 1,868 ratings

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Sena Jeter Naslund is the author of the novels Four Spirits and Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette and a short story collection, The Disobedience of Water. A native of Birmingham, Alabama, she is a winner of the Harper Lee Award; Distinguished Teaching Professor and Writer in Residence at the University of Louisville; director of the Spalding University brief-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing program; former poet laureate of Kentucky; and editor of The Louisville Review and the Fleur-de-Lis Press.

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4.2 out of 5

1,868 global ratings

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D. Tollefsrud

A Long but Compelling and Rewarding Read

Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2024

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This book is a must in our home library. This is our second copy for our home here, our other copy resides in our cabin in Alaska. Because of our limited space our library is reserved for reference materials, poetry, classics, and books that we will read again and again and will pass to our daughter. This book ticks all the requirements. Ahab's Wife is an atmospheric tale that captures the essence of east coast whaling and life in language that is evocative and at times brimming with sheer poetry. I do have a couple minor quibbles with some name-dropping of historically important women characters but I find it so easy to overlook as they do serve to advance the story of this remarkable character. A separate note must be made for the beautiful and evocative illustrations by Christopher Wormell. They are the perfect compliment to the novel.

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Gabby M

This was good, but could have been better

Reviewed in the United States on April 14, 2016

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In Ahab's Wife, author Sena Jeter Naslund takes a barely-mentioned, never seen character and gives us her whole life. A novel I read in high school, The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, had the same kind of basis (took a minor biblical character and told her life story), and I loved that book wholeheartedly. Which probably set my expectations a little too high, which isn't really fair, but between that and a killer first line, "Captain Ahab was neither my first husband nor my last", I was really excited to read this book.

As you can probably surmise from the above, I didn't like it quite as much as I was hoping. Una Spenser is meant to be a one-of-a-kind, irrepressible heroine, but I found her maybe a little too special. She's not just lovely, smart, brave, resilient, passionate, and strong, she's also an object of desire for virtually every man she meets, treated with lavish kindness by almost every person of either gender that she comes across, and unfailingly tolerant and liberal in her attitudes. Which is just not very realistic, and leaves her ringing false as a character. While she certainly has to overcome obstacles (the aftermath of a horrific shipwreck, her treatment at the hands of her first husband, the loss of her first child, the death of her second husband), her only real "flaw" seems to be that she's too impulsive and headstrong, too daring. Which, of course, is presented as not much of a flaw at all.

I wish that Una was a better-drawn and more well-rounded character, because this book could have been quite lovely. Naslund's prose is definitely on the flowery side (if this turns you off, avoid this book at all costs because you will hate it), but I can get down with that if the story is compelling. The first half of the book had much more dramatic tension and excitement than the second half, which dragged in the long sections describing Una standing in the wind and gazing at the stars and/or sea, philosophizing about the world and her place in it. It's quite a lengthy novel at over 650 pages, and editing down some of the aforementioned mind-wandering-while-hair-blows-in-the-wind passages might make Una (and her story as a whole) a little more dynamic and interesting. That being said, I did enjoy reading it and thought it was a pretty good book. Just not quite as good as I wanted it to be.

89 people found this helpful

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TW

Absolutely remarkable

Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2024

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Can’t say enough about this story. Amazing that it could even be written. Just wonderful and Beyond.

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2018

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I love historical books, characters and places That is what drew me to the book. At times I was intrigued and interested....at times totally bored. Some things believable, some not so much. Una's path through life seemed at times connected yet unconnected. I don't think the author's perception of Una or what she wanted her to be was achieved. I was hopeful for her but she often came off as childish, senseless and stupid with a dash of oh she's wonderful because she had a life inspiring thought. The too many places and people caught interest but there was always something lacking. Some scenes were wonderful, some disgusting. As for Ahab, really very little of him of him in the book except for her pining their love. Bottom line: There was too much in this long story that there was not enough depth in any of it. The idea was good.

19 people found this helpful

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Utah Mom

A Wife for Ahab

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2010

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Captain Ahab is one of literature's most enigmatic characters. I found him captivating and he is, shall we say, man enough to inspire another book. Naslund, the author of Ahab's Wife read the few lines in Moby Dick that mention Ahab's wife and son and imagined what kind of woman would marry and be loved by Captain Ahab (his love for her exists even at the height of his insanity).

The resulting novel is fabulous. I enjoyed it more than most books I've read recently. The character of Una is strong, intelligent, and witty. She is unhampered by the time's constraints of women and creates her own adventures. She survives life's tragedies through her own mental strength and desire. She is a perfect match for Captain Ahab.

The novel is well researched and peopled with interesting characters both fictional and real. Una befriends transcendentalist Margaret Fuller and astronomer Maria Mitchell, real Nantucket and Boston women of learning. She is also present when former slave and author Frederick Douglass speaks in Nantucket and excites the abolitionist movement. Naslund accurately and beautifully depicts the early nineteenth century whaling experience, the settings of Nantucket and Kentucky and even the political, religious, and philosophical atmosphere.

Most impressively, Naslund seamlessly weaves the story of Moby Dick into her own much newer work. It fits so well, that one might actually be convinced that Naslund and Melville wrote their manuscripts side by side.

Quite simply, I loved Ahab's Wife. It is exactly what I expect from a novel.

5 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Terry Stafford

Adventures of a strong, brave, and empathetic woman

Reviewed in Canada on August 25, 2019

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Told in the voice of Una, this story tells of the woman whose marriage to Captain Ahab is just one of the many harrowing eras of her life. Una's adventures begin when her mother sends her to live with her aunt, to protect her from her religious fanatic father who she is afraid will kill her as he tries to beat religion into her, his frustration exacerbated by his daughter's strong willed refusal to follow his beliefs. Her strong will propels Una into a richly adventurous, often dangerous life. By the time I finished this book I felt I'd lived through Una's many intense experiences, each so different from the other that it seems she lived several lifetimes. I found it deeply satisfying.

One person found this helpful

Sue1979

Not perfect - but wonderful, all the same

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 21, 2013

Verified Purchase

'Ahab's Wife' was recommended to me by (appropriately) a fellow traveller in a hostel, recently. On hearing the premise, I felt drawn to it - and tracked a copy down... It is lush, romantic, bold, dramatic, tender, engrossing, stunningly-written and an extraordinary read; it is also too long, and the last quarter of the book could have been edited down (in my opinion...) But all in all, it's a wonderful novel that I am very glad I read.
The opening chapter is sublime: I read it open-mouthed. The tension, solitude and hardship that appear in this first chapter do not leave Una, the heroine: she is a girl who knows loss from an early age. Consequently she is self-reliant, sassy and single-minded. After a childhood split between Kentucky and the eastern seaboard, Una goes to see dressed as a cabin boy - and the true story begins...
I loved her time at sea (the time in the whaleboat is fabulously written); I also loved the uncertainty of her feelings between Kit and Giles (who will she love?) - and I felt that the romantic scenes were all believable and masterfully done. As for Una's love of Ahab, I have only praise for it: how hard, to convince a modern readership that a teenaged girl and a man in his fifties could achieve a profound and loving partnership - but I was convinced. (Others, I see, have not been - but I found their early married life to be plausible and so tender). Equally, I was moved by the scene under the starry sky, where Una knows in her heart that Ahab is gone...
Like other readers, I felt that the use of actual people - Maria Mitchell, Margaret Fuller (especially her) and Emerson - hindered the novel, somewhat. Anchoring Una's life in amongst actual ones didn't make her feel any more real (she already feels real, so richly drawn) and I rather felt that these characters (especially Fuller) slowed the plot right down. I also felt that the last quarter of the book rather fell away; on land, and with her eyes no longer on the sea, Una's passion dies which leaves for a rather half-hearted ending. I smiled to see her final choice of partner - that was neatly done - but all the vigour and bullishness that Una had had, since birth, seemed faded. Which felt a shame.
But all in all, this was the best book I have read in a long, long time. It gripped me; it was so different to anything else I'd read, and I loved seeing this male world through a woman's eyes. Having always wanted to know more of Ahab, I really do know so much more, now. And the language... Naslund is such a competent writer: the description, in particular, is gorgeous stuff, and she is equally adept with her dialogue. I was washed along with this fresh, thrilling, poignant, surprising, brave and celebratory novel. What a bold choice - and how well Naslund has managed it. Not perfect - but still a huge and fabulous achievement. I will find this in hardback, and keep it; it's one to re-visit again and again.

One person found this helpful

Rachel Love

Packaging

Reviewed in Canada on June 22, 2019

Verified Purchase

Very good book. Cover was damaged on arrival, but that’s not a big deal for me.

skuaimages

only just started this!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 27, 2012

Verified Purchase

I have read Moby Dick several times - it is one of my favourite books - a friend of mine borrowed it when we were on holiday in NZ - I read a little and told myself to get it.
The author writes beautiful prose - just like Melville - may update this when I have finished the book.

debbie

Long book, but short chapters based on events that make you want to keep reading.

Reviewed in Canada on June 7, 2020

Verified Purchase

History from a woman ‘s perspective, fiction based on themes of adventure and human bonds.

One person found this helpful

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