The North Water: A Novel - Ian McGuire

A nineteenth-century whaling ship sets sail for the Arctic with a killer aboard in this dark, sharp, and highly original tale that grips like a thriller.

Behold the man: stinking, drunk, and brutal. Henry Drax is a harpooner on the Volunteer, a Yorkshire whaler bound for the rich hunting waters of the arctic circle. Also aboard for the first time is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation, no money, and no better option than to sail as the ship's medic on this violent, filthy, and ill-fated voyage.

In India, during the Siege of Delhi, Sumner thought he had experienced the depths to which man can stoop. He had hoped to find temporary respite on the Volunteer, but rest proves impossible with Drax on board. The discovery of something evil in the hold rouses Sumner to action. And as the confrontation between the two men plays out amid the freezing darkness of an arctic winter, the fateful question arises: who will survive until spring?

With savage, unstoppable momentum and the blackest wit, The North Water weaves a superlative story of humanity under the most extreme conditions.

PRAISE
“McGuire delivers not only arresting depictions of bloody destruction, but moments of fine prose that recall Seamus Heaney's harsh music, as when an iceberg is described as 'an albinistic butte unmoored from the desert floor.' For noirish thrills in an unusual setting, McGuire has the goods and the gore...” —Kirkuk Reviews

“Raw and compulsively readable . . . think The Revenant for the Arctic Circle.” —The Millions

“McGuire delivers one bravura set-piece after another . . . The North Water has, in places, a Conrad–Melville undercurrent, but for the most part it is Dickens’s influence that is most keenly felt . . . This is a stunning novel, one that snares the reader from the outset and keeps the tightest grip until its bitter end.” —Financial Times

“Compared with this savage tale of Arctic survival, Leonardo diCaprio’s bear-wrestling ordeal in The Revenant looks like something out of AA Milne . . . McGuire expertly arranges all this mayhem, and the narrative is horrifically gripping. The North Water is smoothly readable despite the horrors it depicts, and that’s testament to the quality of McGuire’s prose. Such fine writing might have been lifted from the pages of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.” —Independent on Sunday

“Full of foul deeds in a savagely beautiful setting, The North Water is a gripping, pitch-black yarn.” —Sydney Morning Herald

“...[A] truly great book. It’s one I will return to. . . whenever I need a horizon broader than the one in front of me, or a reminder that when we pit ourselves against the forces of nature, the only thing we really need to fear are other men.” —Vulpes Libris

“This is a novel that takes us to the limits of flesh and blood. Utterly convincing and compelling, remorselessly vivid, and insidiously witty, The North Water is a startling achievement.” —Martin Amis, New York Times bestselling author of Zone of Interest

“It's a fast-paced, gripping story set in a world of gruesome violence and perversity, where 'why?' is not a question and murder happens on a whim: but where a very faint ray of grace and hope lights up the landscape of salt and blood and ice. A tour de force of narrative tension and a masterful reconstruction of a lost world that seems to exist at the limits of the human imagination.” —Hilary Mantel, New York Times bestselling author of Wolf Hall

“The North Water is the rare novel capable of making a past time and place palpable. Ian McGuire writes with a poet's attentiveness to detail, which infuses this dark and violent novel with an unsettling beauty.” —Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Serena and Above the Waterfall

“The North Water is a whaling novel in the same way that Blood Meridian is a western. I enjoyed the brashness and the economy of the writing, the sense of humanity, and the sly, black humor. The novel wasn't afraid to take chances and I was surprised several times. I was always entertained. . . . An exceedingly well-written historical adventure.” —Shannon Burke, author of Into the Savage Country

“If one took Melville's dream journal and compiled the nightmares into one harrowing novel, it would be Ian McGuire's The North Water. The claustrophobic conflict between the flawed humanity of Patrick Sumner and the supernatural evil of Henry Drax examines the brutal depths of the human soul.” —James Scott, author of The Kept

“Enthralling and brutal. A vivisection of hard men in a cold world, and a propulsive, suspenseful adventure into the darkness of mortal existence.” —Dennis Mahoney, author of Bell Weather and Fellow Mortals