Another Review at MyShelf.Com

Landfalls
Naomi Williams

Little, Brown
6 August 2015/ ISBN 9781408705766
Literary/Historical

Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde

 

In the spring of 1785, Captain de Laperouse leaves France with two ships on a voyage of discovery. This is going to take four years as the ships traverse the oceans on their scientific mission from the icy vastness of Russia to sunny Australia. But it won’t be plain sailing, and everybody on board will discover more about themselves while they make discoveries for their King.

Firstly, although it sounds like it, this is not primarily a sea story. If Hornblower and Patrick O’Brien etc. are not your bag, then don’t discard this novel, as it is not that type of thing despite being about a long sea voyage. You won’t be reading about how a frigate is sailed or accounts of typical naval battles; essentially this is very much a book about people as individuals. The story is told from the points of view of everybody involved, from the Captain downwards and also of those that the travellers meet and those left behind. There are accounts of romances, species discovered, terrible hardships, hostile natives, exotic landscapes and shipboard relationships of all kinds, as well as the travellers’ relationship with their home country. The Enlightenment sent them, but as they travel France is undergoing the Revolution and those who make it home will find a country as alien as the ones they have voyaged to discover. This is a very well written story of the type that stays in the mind long afterwards and, despite involving the sort of voyage that could best be descried as ill-fated, it is not a tragedy. One to be read slowly and savored for the literary, but highly readable, treat that it is.

 
Reviewed 2014
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