The Rope Eater
-
-
4.7 • 3 Ratings
-
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
When Brendan Kane accepts a stranger’s offer of work--two years on a ship departing the following morning--the nature of the journey isn't divulged. It matters not, though, for Kane is directionless himself, having just witnessed the Civil War's horrors only to return North with nothing but the clothes on his back and as many dead soldiers' letters as he could carry in his pockets.
Aboard the mysterious Narthex, Kane meets a ramshackle crew that includes an eccentric doctor and a three-handed Muslim full of horrifying lore. Kane learns only that they're sailing for the Artic in search of gold or maybe whales. But when it turns out the Narthex's destination is a temperate paradise hidden amidst glaciers–a mythical place–Kane and his cohorts must struggle to survive not only the bleak Artic conditions, but the loosening grip on sanity of an egomaniacal captain and the data-obsessed doctor. With each second that passes, it seems increasingly unlikely any of them will get out alive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jones's haunting, gorgeous debut chronicles the travels and travails of Brendan Kane, a young Union Army deserter who joins the crew of the Arctic-bound Narthex. The ship is owned by the enigmatic, pianola-playing Mr. West and directed by Dr. Architeuthis, an eccentric who spends his days performing strange navigational experiments. The rest of the crew is an odd assortment of prisoners, outcasts and cheerful thugs, none of whom know the true purpose of the voyage. Eventually, West and Architeuthis reveal that the ship is bound for a mythical, lush and paradisiacal valley they believe is hidden in the stark expanse of the furthest northern regions. The Narthex makes her way through terrible storms and vast fields of grinding ice before she must be abandoned and the men continue the search on foot and in small boats. Nestled within the story of the quest is the fascinatingly grotesque but lyrical tale of the village where Aziz, the three-handed engine tender, grew up; there, parents committed crimes against their children in the name of opportunity, and "t night the peaks echoed with the screams and cries of children and of mothers and the howling of madmen and the wind." (It is here that mesmerized readers will learn, to their horror, what the term rope eater refers to.) The voyage continues, with the men enduring all the privations of Shackleton and Scott reduced to frozen, rotting husks fueled only by courage, will and a brute instinct for self-preservation. Readers may determine that this bleak, harshly beautiful story is almost as exhausting as the Arctic trek itself, but those who persevere will find the journey astonishing.
