This is a novel about a man who gets swallowed by a whale, and I tell you in all honesty that I was really enjoying it right up to the point where a guy was swallowed by a whale.
Jay Gardiner is a 19-year-old whose father, a legendary scuba diver, was extremely tough on him, screaming at him and endlessly picking at him as he tried to teach his son to follow in his footsteps. Eventually, their relationship breaks down completely, and not even a terminal illness can move Jay to return to his father. But when his father takes his own life by diving, Jay attempts to make things right with his surviving family by recovering his remains. It’s on this emotional mission when a lapse in concentration leads to his predicament.
If you look up reader reviews online, you’ll see that Whalefall is a really divisive book, with it’s 3.6 average a real battle of attrition between the many 5-star reviews and the equally numerous 2- and 1-star reviews. I think a big problem for many is that the marketing and book jacket might reasonably lead you to suspect something like The Martian, where the big draw is a scientifically accurate depiction of what it might be like if you really were swallowed by a whale. While Kraus clearly did some research, his heart is much more in the damaged relationship between father and son, and using the whale as a somewhat supernatural device to establish communication between Jay and his father. Even I, who began the book really enjoying the exploration of the father-son dynamic, found the way it was used to be strange and off-putting.
As my interest in the relationship between Jay and his dead Dad diminished, I found myself no longer particularly caring whether or not he ever got out of that damn whale. I just wanted the book to be over, either way.
