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Night Ship: A Voyage of Discovery
Night Voyage of Discovery, explores the boundaries of space and time, of identity and self-realization, of gender and sexuality in an adventure tale. Six women, unknown to each other by day, join each other in a common dream aboard a fifteenth century sailing ship. A 1957 globe connects the real and the fantasy world. What would it be to have a 1957 globe in the world of pre-discovery? Kings and queens might vie for it, set their sails at war for it. Or it might be a fraud.
160 pages, Paperback
First published June 15, 2003
About the author
Mattie McClane
15 books1 followerMattie McClane (Kristine A. Kaiser) is an American novelist, poet, and journalist. She is the second and youngest daughter born to James L. and Shirlie I. Myers in Moline, Illinois. Her father was a commercial artist and her mother worked as a secretary.
McClane’s earliest education was in the Catholic schools. Her experience with their teachings deeply affected her. At a young age, she became aware of gender inequality. She credits her early religious instruction for making her think about "all kinds of truths" and ethical matters.
McClane's parents divorced when she was eight years old. Her mother remarried attorney John G. Ames and the new couple moved to a house beside the Rock River. The river centrally figures in McClane’s creative imagination. She describes her childhood as being “extraordinarily free and close to nature.”
McClane moved to Colorado and married John Kaiser in 1979 in Aurora, just East of Denver.
They then moved to Bettendorf, Iowa where they had three children. John worked as a chemist. Mattie became interested in politics, joining the local League of Women Voters. According to McClane, she spent her 20s “caring for young children and working for good government.”
She graduated from Augustana College with a B.A. degree in the Humanities. She began writing a political column for Quad-Cities Online and Small Newspaper Group, based in Illinois.
Her family moved to Louisville, Kentucky where she continued with her journalism and then earned an M.A. in English from the University of Louisville. Critically acclaimed author Sena Jeter Naslund directed her first creative thesis, “Unbuttoning Light and Other Stories,” which was later published in a collection.
She was accepted to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program, where she wrote the short novel Night Ship, working under the tutelage of Pulitzer Prize winning author Alison Lurie. McClane studied with Dennis Sampson in poetry also. She graduated in 1999.
She would write a column for the High Point Enterprise in North Carolina. She would later write for the News and Observer. McClane has regularly published commentary for over 25 years.
Mattie McClane is the author of Night Ship: A Voyage of Discovery (2003), River Hymn: Essays Evangelical and Political (2004), Wen Wilson (2009), Unbuttoning Light: The Collected Short Stories of Mattie McClane (2012), Now Time (2013), and Stations of the Cross (2016), The Mother Word: An Exploration of The Visual (2017) and Simeon's Canticle (2018), and The Song of the Grackle (2019).
She lives in North Carolina.
McClane’s earliest education was in the Catholic schools. Her experience with their teachings deeply affected her. At a young age, she became aware of gender inequality. She credits her early religious instruction for making her think about "all kinds of truths" and ethical matters.
McClane's parents divorced when she was eight years old. Her mother remarried attorney John G. Ames and the new couple moved to a house beside the Rock River. The river centrally figures in McClane’s creative imagination. She describes her childhood as being “extraordinarily free and close to nature.”
McClane moved to Colorado and married John Kaiser in 1979 in Aurora, just East of Denver.
They then moved to Bettendorf, Iowa where they had three children. John worked as a chemist. Mattie became interested in politics, joining the local League of Women Voters. According to McClane, she spent her 20s “caring for young children and working for good government.”
She graduated from Augustana College with a B.A. degree in the Humanities. She began writing a political column for Quad-Cities Online and Small Newspaper Group, based in Illinois.
Her family moved to Louisville, Kentucky where she continued with her journalism and then earned an M.A. in English from the University of Louisville. Critically acclaimed author Sena Jeter Naslund directed her first creative thesis, “Unbuttoning Light and Other Stories,” which was later published in a collection.
She was accepted to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program, where she wrote the short novel Night Ship, working under the tutelage of Pulitzer Prize winning author Alison Lurie. McClane studied with Dennis Sampson in poetry also. She graduated in 1999.
She would write a column for the High Point Enterprise in North Carolina. She would later write for the News and Observer. McClane has regularly published commentary for over 25 years.
Mattie McClane is the author of Night Ship: A Voyage of Discovery (2003), River Hymn: Essays Evangelical and Political (2004), Wen Wilson (2009), Unbuttoning Light: The Collected Short Stories of Mattie McClane (2012), Now Time (2013), and Stations of the Cross (2016), The Mother Word: An Exploration of The Visual (2017) and Simeon's Canticle (2018), and The Song of the Grackle (2019).
She lives in North Carolina.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 11, 2020
Night Ship
by KD RyeSeptember 24, 20201 Comment
I read a lot, but even so, my shelves are filled with treasures yet to be discovered. A much needed break from screen time was needed this week so I forwent my e-library for my actual library. I have a small section of what I’ve entitled “feminist-esque fiction,” and pulled this little book down. It’s a find I either picked up at one of the big book sales I sorely miss attending or a neighbor’s garage sale, I can’t remember. However, I didn’t know that I’d be embarking on a journey to “the place of lesbian desire” as described in the preface or I would have read this sooner. The book I am talking about is probably one you’ve never heard of as any indication by its online presence, but I do hope that this review garners some interest in Night Ship: A Voyage of Discovery by Mattie McClane.
I have no idea how Night Ship ended up on the shelf of a lesbian book blogger, but it feels a lot like fate. This story was intriguing to say the least. I devoured it in only a couple of hours, and when I fell asleep last night I half expected the story to continue in my own dreams. The plot is not one I can lay out simply, as there are six different stories that continue into one. Each chapter covers a character in the book, giving just enough detail about their actual lives so that you understand their behavior in the shared dream they experience together. Six different women, Galveo, Sella, Mahajan, Nic, Melody, and Trinket, who don’t know each other all share a common dream aboard a fifteenth century sailing ship.
In many ways Night Ship provided the same feeling I get when ingesting a perfectly executed short story. The small window into each character’s life in the beginning of the chapters was telling just enough so that by the end of the dream I felt like I consumed a full novel despite it being cut in six different narratives. Each character was well developed and interesting. Galveo, whose day life gave me serious To The Lighthouse vibes, is a writer but in the dream she is captain of the Night Ship. Sella is the person all the other characters don’t like or trust besides Galveo. She is the navigator on the ship and wants to be the one closest to Galveo. Mahajan is an immigrant from India who feels like an outsider in America and that feeling carries over when on the Night Ship. Nic is an overworked newspaper editor who is the ship’s mechanic set on keeping Galveo and Stella apart. Melody is an aspiring singer, but on the Night Ship she is the wise scribe. Trinket is a kooky owner of a junk shop who acts as the ship’s supply keeper.
The writing in this book had poetic quality in that the imagery was fluent, but also the narrative was to the point. Which is why I think so much story could be achieved in 146 short pages (the book is literally quite small). When on the Night Ship it very much felt like a dream. A character would be in one place on the ship and then another, sometimes joined by other characters. I got used to the flow pretty quickly and enjoyed the ride.
Truthfully, I try to let a book breathe in my brain for at least a few days after reading before writing a review, but Night Ship is just so different, I wanted to start talking about it immediately. If anyone out there has read it and would like to discuss, please reach out. If you haven’t read Night Ship, I encourage you to give it a try. There’s love, deception, adventure – all the makings of a great story in such a small book. It only seems to be available via paperback through Amazon, Ebay, and Barnes and Noble. If you feel like this is a story you must read and those avenues aren’t available to you, I could be persuaded to send out my copy.
https://twitter.com/the_lesbian52/sta...
by KD RyeSeptember 24, 20201 Comment
I read a lot, but even so, my shelves are filled with treasures yet to be discovered. A much needed break from screen time was needed this week so I forwent my e-library for my actual library. I have a small section of what I’ve entitled “feminist-esque fiction,” and pulled this little book down. It’s a find I either picked up at one of the big book sales I sorely miss attending or a neighbor’s garage sale, I can’t remember. However, I didn’t know that I’d be embarking on a journey to “the place of lesbian desire” as described in the preface or I would have read this sooner. The book I am talking about is probably one you’ve never heard of as any indication by its online presence, but I do hope that this review garners some interest in Night Ship: A Voyage of Discovery by Mattie McClane.
I have no idea how Night Ship ended up on the shelf of a lesbian book blogger, but it feels a lot like fate. This story was intriguing to say the least. I devoured it in only a couple of hours, and when I fell asleep last night I half expected the story to continue in my own dreams. The plot is not one I can lay out simply, as there are six different stories that continue into one. Each chapter covers a character in the book, giving just enough detail about their actual lives so that you understand their behavior in the shared dream they experience together. Six different women, Galveo, Sella, Mahajan, Nic, Melody, and Trinket, who don’t know each other all share a common dream aboard a fifteenth century sailing ship.
In many ways Night Ship provided the same feeling I get when ingesting a perfectly executed short story. The small window into each character’s life in the beginning of the chapters was telling just enough so that by the end of the dream I felt like I consumed a full novel despite it being cut in six different narratives. Each character was well developed and interesting. Galveo, whose day life gave me serious To The Lighthouse vibes, is a writer but in the dream she is captain of the Night Ship. Sella is the person all the other characters don’t like or trust besides Galveo. She is the navigator on the ship and wants to be the one closest to Galveo. Mahajan is an immigrant from India who feels like an outsider in America and that feeling carries over when on the Night Ship. Nic is an overworked newspaper editor who is the ship’s mechanic set on keeping Galveo and Stella apart. Melody is an aspiring singer, but on the Night Ship she is the wise scribe. Trinket is a kooky owner of a junk shop who acts as the ship’s supply keeper.
The writing in this book had poetic quality in that the imagery was fluent, but also the narrative was to the point. Which is why I think so much story could be achieved in 146 short pages (the book is literally quite small). When on the Night Ship it very much felt like a dream. A character would be in one place on the ship and then another, sometimes joined by other characters. I got used to the flow pretty quickly and enjoyed the ride.
Truthfully, I try to let a book breathe in my brain for at least a few days after reading before writing a review, but Night Ship is just so different, I wanted to start talking about it immediately. If anyone out there has read it and would like to discuss, please reach out. If you haven’t read Night Ship, I encourage you to give it a try. There’s love, deception, adventure – all the makings of a great story in such a small book. It only seems to be available via paperback through Amazon, Ebay, and Barnes and Noble. If you feel like this is a story you must read and those avenues aren’t available to you, I could be persuaded to send out my copy.
https://twitter.com/the_lesbian52/sta...
June 7, 2016
Dennis King
December 17, 2015 ·
A unique Christmas tale: North Carolina writer Mattie McClane's remarkable short novel Night Ship (2003) presents the story of six women with very distinct personalities and backgrounds who are drawn together on Christmas Eve in a shared dream on what they believe to be a 15th century sailing ship. As this is a dream world, the ship pretty much sails itself, and the adventures of the intrepid six (who encounter and befriend a utopian native-American community) have only a tenuous connection to the world of the 15th century. A link of sorts to our contemporary world, however, is maintained through the captain's possession of a 1957 globe that plays a quasi-magical role in the story. McClane's decision to concentrate on a waking dream type of environment was exactly right--there is more than enough realism in the psychology of the characters. At the end of a year the crew celebrates Christmas by tying streamers from the yards. "Night Ship rolled forward in tropical waters; the sea was deep blue, the clouds were angled and whjite like blown sails. It was Christmas, a festive day that we had waited for. It reminded us of our continent, our homes, where confections and cakes were being baked. Their dreamed aromas filled our nostrils, the sea and home joining in our minds."
December 17, 2015 ·
A unique Christmas tale: North Carolina writer Mattie McClane's remarkable short novel Night Ship (2003) presents the story of six women with very distinct personalities and backgrounds who are drawn together on Christmas Eve in a shared dream on what they believe to be a 15th century sailing ship. As this is a dream world, the ship pretty much sails itself, and the adventures of the intrepid six (who encounter and befriend a utopian native-American community) have only a tenuous connection to the world of the 15th century. A link of sorts to our contemporary world, however, is maintained through the captain's possession of a 1957 globe that plays a quasi-magical role in the story. McClane's decision to concentrate on a waking dream type of environment was exactly right--there is more than enough realism in the psychology of the characters. At the end of a year the crew celebrates Christmas by tying streamers from the yards. "Night Ship rolled forward in tropical waters; the sea was deep blue, the clouds were angled and whjite like blown sails. It was Christmas, a festive day that we had waited for. It reminded us of our continent, our homes, where confections and cakes were being baked. Their dreamed aromas filled our nostrils, the sea and home joining in our minds."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews