For some reason, Moby-Dick has gotten a reputation as a boring slog of a book. That’s what I had in my head before I read it last year, anyways, and was delighted to be proven wrong. It’s actually both lively and informative, full of adventure and interesting facts about whaling in the olden days of yore. And while our narrator, Ishmael, is a bit of a cipher, Captain Ahab is one of the most memorable characters in literature, with his ivory false leg and burning wrath for the white whale. And in a throwaway line or two, it’s mentioned that he has a wife at home.
In Ahab’s Wife, author Sena Jeter Naslund takes that 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…
Full review can be found at 500 Books