The second novel of the Ends of the Earth Trilogy and the sequel to Rites of Passage, who ironic title belies how sinister that novel is. This novel is also quite sinister, but in a somewhat different way. These novels, so far the two of them at least, hide in plain sight as the kind of seagoing novels that a lot of British writers are well-known for. This starts off like it’s a Henry James or EM Forster novel and then it slowly turns.
We find ourselves on a ship, still in a novel narrated by Talbot, a minor officer, that is taking a group of passengers to the Antipodes. They’ve hit a kind of deadcalm, and in the stillness, a green invasive growth has begun creeping up the hull, threatening to tear it apart. It’s almost like the predatory green island in Life of Pi, in a way.
In the meantime, the crew and passengers, now stuck with each other and even needing help from one another find themselves uncomfortably intermixed and the walls of class and propriety are slowly shutting down. This tension, and the little tension of the green invasion threatens the stillness of the boat.
There’s a quote on the back of this novel from AS Byatt, where she basically says that no other writer more successfully captures the frailty of human enterprise. I think this is an apt way to look at this novel. It’s deeply sinister and what is clear is how little protection society is if you’re an individual within it, and especially outside it.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Close-Quarters-Sir-William-Golding-dp-0571298567/dp/0571298567/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1572116594)