Readers: I dare you to resist a sea-faring, adventurous tale that begins with these words: “Call me Ishmaelle. But know that I have not always gone by this name.”
You’ve no doubt recognized the allusion to Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” But while Xiaolu Guo’s novel "Call Me Ishmaelle" draws inspiration and a kind of foundational structure from Moby Dick, it is a wonderful and thrilling re-telling of the original. I loved it!
As young Ishmaelle, disguised as a boy so that she may go to sea to find her fortune, takes stock of her meager possessions, she realizes that she has nothing to lose.
“So here I was,” she thinks, “a cabin boy on a merchant ship! I carried my father’s penknife in my trousers along with Aunt Glady’s’s tiny seahorse lady.”
Matthew Pearl, an award-winning author, writes what he knows in his new novel, “The Award” — which is why the book swerves into some wildly dark places.
Originally published under a pseudonym, Banville’s Quirke mystery series follows a troubled Dublin coroner who dwells in the basement morgue of a hospital.
Quiara Alegría Hudes’ novel was inspired by “Siddhartha” and other classic tales of men seeking enlightenment. It's about a mother in Philadelphia who buys a bus ticket, leaving her daughter behind.
