The Rathbones

by Janice Clark

A gothic, literary adventure set in New England, Janice Clark's haunting debut chronicles one hundred years of a once prosperous and now crumbling whaling family, told by its last surviving member.

Mercy Rathbone, fifteen years old, is the diminutive scion of the Rathbone clan. Her father, the last in the beleaguered dynasty, has been lost at sea for seven years - ever since the last whale was seen off the coast of Naiwayonk, Connecticut. Mercy's memories of her father grow dimmer each day, and she spends most of her time in the attic hideaway of her reclusive uncle Mordecai, who teaches her the secrets of Greek history and nautical navigation through his collection of specimens and moldering books. But when a strange, violent visitor turns up one night, Mercy and Mordecai are forced to flee the crumbling mansion and set sail on a journey that will bring them deep into the haunted history of the Rathbone family, and the reasons for its undoing.

As Mercy and Mordecai sail from island to island off the Connecticut coast, encountering dangers and mysteries, friends and foes, they untangle the knots of the Rathbone story, discovering secrets long encased in memory.  They learn the history of the family’s founder and patriarch, Moses Rathbone, and the legendary empire he built of ships staffed with the sons of his many, many wives. Sons who stumbled in their father’s shadow, distracted by the arrival of the Stark sisters, a trio of “golden” girls, whose mesmerizing beauty may have sparked the Rathbone’s decline.

From the depths of the sea to the lonely heights of the widow’s walk; from the wisdom of the worn Rathbone wives to the mysterious origins of a sinking island, Mercy and Mordecai’s journey will bring them to places they never thought possible.  But will they piece together a possible future from the mistakes of the past, or is the once great  family’s fate doomed to match that of the whales themselves?

Inspired by The Odyssey by way of Edgar Allan Poe and Moby Dick, The Rathbones is an ambitious, mythic, and courageous tour de force that marks the debut of a dazzling new literary voice.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Gothic, Magical Realism, Historical, Adult

Audio

First published August 6, 2013

About the author

Janice Clark is a writer and designer living in Chicago. She grew up in Mystic, Connecticut (land of whaling and pizza) and has lived in Montreal, Kansas City, San Francisco, and New York, where she earned an MFA in writing at NYU. Her short fiction has appeared in Pindeldyboz and The Nebraska Review and her design work is represented in the Museum of Modern Art. The Rathbones, which she also illustrated, is her first novel.

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may have been the weirdest book I have ever read. And I've read a lot of really weird books.

Some topics covered in this book:

-whaling
-basic carpentry
-pickling techniques
-sperm whale anatomy
-inbreeding
-wife swapping
-kidnapping
-polygamy

It's just a multitude of creepiness, yet I couldn't put it down. It was completely surreal, absolutely weird, and at times more than a bit icky, and yet I really enjoyed it and was bummed that it stopped.

It follows the adventures of Mercy as she uncovers the secrets of her family, the Rathbones, in whaling and totally fictional New England. And if you think your family has issues, wow, you never met the Rathbones. They are like generational Jerry Springer episodes. To start explaining the twistedness would be to lessen it's impact when you read it. It's twisted. Trust me.

And yet Mercy seems relatively normal compared to the twistedness that surrounds her. And as a narrator, she's sympathetic and you feel just like hugging her as she tries to make sense of who she is and where she comes from.

It's a great story and well told.

[Chaitra · Rating 2 out of 5]

So. An interesting and incredibly juicy premise of a whaling family wholly populated by and due to incest, an adventure that span multiple islands with old enigmatic people working at looms, crazy old people filling their house with beauty because they themselves have none, a Penelope like woman supposedly waiting for a husband that left 10 years ago following the whales, a Charles Darwin type naturalist who has spent his entire life in a dark attic, a number of women blessed with extraordinary beauty but who bring ill luck, a sinking island, a Circe like woman who spends her life in a cave luring people, and more incest. You'd think this is enough to make a cracker of a book. It's not.

It's just an extremely wordy and tedious book that chronicles the fate of a family. I'd rather they were dead and gone than the whales. It's true that it's a glorification of a way of life that I cannot sympathize with even if it didn't have incest in it. The well being of a family profiting on the slaughter of countless whales, even if this is historical fiction, isn't something I feel keenly about. Add to that wholly unlikable characters, a main character whose main quality seems to be collating and narrating the facts of her family without giving it any color of her own, a messy mixture of myths and fantasies, and you have a pointless book that took me ages to get through. It really only took me two days, but it felt like an eternity.

Every single element in it is normally exactly what I would swallow up without question. Even the whale killing, which I don't agree with, I can take in a well written story. But this book wasn't for me. 2 stars.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

From The Millions article:

The Rathbones by Janice Clark: The Rathbones is the most sui generis debut you’re likely to encounter this year. Think Moby-Dick directed by David Lynch from a screenplay by Gabriel Garcia Marquez…with Charles Addams doing the set design and The Decembrists supplying the chanteys. Initially the story of the last surviving member of an eccentric 19th-Century whaling dynasty, it becomes the story of that dynasty itself. I should also say that this was the single most exciting thing I read in manuscript in graduate school, where the author and I studied together. Clark writes a beautiful prose line, and the story, like the ocean, get deeper, richer, and stranger the farther out you go.

You had me at "David Lynch".


After reading the book, I'm leaving that description from The Millions article above because, while I may not fully agree with the relationships made, I absolutely love it. It's no secret that I love David Lynch more than just about anything else in the world, and the only thing in that description that I'm lukewarm on is Moby Dick, which didn't do it for me. But I want to have loved it. So.

This book is charming and disarming, quite imaginative and expressive. It's more than a coming-of-age novel, more than a whaling epic. It's a modern (funny considering most of the book takes place in the 18th and 19th centuries) retelling of the Odyssey at times, another love of mine. It's almost like Clark reached into my head and picked out little things I have an interest in and then wrote a story around them.

The storytelling is hypnotic at times and more than once I felt an ebb and flow in Clark's words, mimicking the tide. Writing is a craft, and that is evident in this book. Dark, surreal, hopeful, historical, adventurous.

I loved it.

It's just quirky enough to be what I needed to read right now. It's not perfect, but nothing is. Growing up is certainly not perfect, and that's something from the book that resonated with me right now. The memories we have are often faulty and mistaken, and the process of growing up requires that we reevaluate those mistakes and see the past for what it really is, and the people in our past for what they really are - sometimes we realize we were wrong, and were blaming someone for something unfairly; sometimes, granted, it goes the other way too, where we kept someone on a pedestal for entirely too long, when the adored didn't deserve it.

In this sense, this book was somewhat heartbreaking for me to read right now. But that's what life is, one heartbreaking moment after another. Either it breaks us or we grow from it. That's just how it goes.

I had looked into the distance so long that I hadn't seen what was near at hand. If we don't cherish those who stay near, what do we have? Only longing. Longing which we grow to love because it's all we have.
(p 348)

[Cher 'N Books · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 stars - Meh. Just ok.

Have you ever ordered something from a restaurant, and when the waiter sets down your dish you instantly knew they had served the wrong entree? And then when you tell the surly waiter, "No, I ordered XYZ", they replied, "but that IS XYZ". Yeah, this book was like that.

I was expecting historical fiction with a touch of magical realism, and while those ingredients are present, it also ended up being an incredibly creepy, sometimes strange, but most of the time boring book...and that's creepy in a pervish way, not in a scary way. One scene in particular was so repulsive that it completely threw me off guard. I would expect something like that from a horror novel (which I, despite being an extremely eclectic reader, almost always avoid), but NOT from a historical fiction novel. The scene was when the main character hides while watching her parents having sex, sex that during which her mother dies, and her father keeps having sex with her now dead mom. If that's not disturbing enough, when the father finally concludes his sexual escapade, he instantly looks at the main character, because he knew she was in the room the whole time.

If you have a penchant for bizarre, disturbing things, then I would still only recommend this one to patient readers as it makes for a laborious read with the plot being rather slow to unfold.

For the final disappointment, as a whale lover, I grew tired of reading about ignorant whale hunters as they senselessly and enthusiastically pushed the sperm whales to the brink of extinction. They noticed that every year there were fewer and fewer sperm whales, but did they ever stop and wonder why that might be? Of course not. I dislike stupid people in my fiction almost as much as in my reality.

-------------------------------------------
Favorite Quote: N/A, but to be fair I listened to this on audiobook and highlight worthy quotes do not always jump out at me as much when listening as they do when I am reading with my eyes. I'm sure the book has some lovely passages in it, but I have no way of quoting them.

First Sentence: If I had not heard the singing voice that night, none of the rest might have happened.

[Marilee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best novels I've read in the past year ... it's part historical novel, allegory, fable, family saga and fictional memoir. It is Janice Clark's first book and she is a rare talent, one I'll be watching.

Without giving too much away, the story of The Rathbone family is set in the mid nineteenth century, on the sea faring coast of Connecticut. The males of the family are whalers, the progeny of Moses Rathbone. There are disturbing aspects to the family history, but handled with a matter of fact non sensational prose. The full weight of the secrets dawn slowly... peeled back bit by bit from the shrouds of time and distance as if by the crow which flits and flies in and out of the story, on and off the shoulder of Mercy, our young heroine. The crow serves as an allegorical device, always there, sometimes helpful and protective, sometimes threatening, but like the sea and whales, mute testimony to the power and pull of heritage, memory and destiny.

The book reminded me a bit of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, in the blending of reality and fantasy. Which is which? Does it matter? Aren't all novels fantastical to one degree or another?

Highly recommended... a terrific book. Perhaps I should mention that while Mercy, the main protagonist of the story is a young girl, this is not a book for youngsters, ie. the YA audience.

[Gretchen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The night I finished reading The Rathbones I dreamed of water and ruin. I woke up this morning and had to remind myself that I'm in Kansas, not near the ocean and nowhere in the vicinity of a ship or a widow's walk.

Imagery of water, weirdness and whales flows through every page of The Rathbones. Janice Clark's art and design background makes it easy to visualize every detail in this weathered and somewhat scary world by the Atlantic. She is excellent at describing fabrics, clothing, architecture, environment, furnishings. I felt brined and excited to touch the ropes, the anchors, the sunbeaten boards of the deck. Clark is also gifted in important details like the characters' names -- Mercy, Mordecai, Verity, Hepzibah, Amaziah, Euphemia -- and in doing so she makes sure the reader is submerged in this saltwatery New England seacoast. These are the strengths of the book.

Motivation, empathy, laws of physics -- these are the weaknesses of the book. Although it's written in first person (mostly), I wasn't able to get inside Mercy's head at all. She's detached, robotic, and quite hard to empathize with. She is being chased through much of the book and although she is on the run for months, doesn't seem to care. At one point she has just been yelled at, told to leave, and is being assaulted with heavy objects thrown at her. She runs through the hall briefly to escape, then slips into the library to make commentary on the shape and content of the books there.

She narrates her tale with a neutral, glassy eye, making no emotional commentary even as she watches her mother die while having sexual intercourse with her father, who then repeatedly rams himself into the lifeless body. (awkward!) Mercy is the heroine of the tale but not easy to relate to or to like. I had a hard time getting through certain parts of the book because I never got to see her as human so therefore I didn't really care what happened to her.

Although I felt myself wholly engaged in the physical sights and textures of this world, I had a hard time figuring out its actual 'rules of physics.' Mercy's crows could pick her up and fly her places, but she hides in a trunk with them and crushes and kills one even though we are told repeatedly how tiny and light she is - there's no squawking, no show of strength from this bird? A wooden oar is tossed onto a rock and "shatters?" While a rowboat is sinking, a man uses a powdery substance to plug the hole? The scholar tries to tie his long hair back and accidentally knots himself to a ship's rigging? Mercy knows anatomy so well that she can assemble a human skeleton in the dark, who is only missing one bone, "the left ring finger?" I struggled with cartoons like these.

I loved the ambition of this novel and the promise of an epic adventure centering on a brave young girl. I would recommend it for a second reading, and I might go back and do that because it was hard to keep the plot straight for me this first time around. Although it wasn't perfect, I enjoyed my time in the islands reading waterlogged ledgers and feeling the spray of great whales swimming below the surface.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a great read! The Rathbone's is an unusual and unique tale. It was like reading a classic -- it has a courageous heroine named Mercy (a coming-of-age whaling dynasty heiress) amid gorgeous language of ships and sea; descriptions so engaging and naturally vivid I was surprised to not find sea mist and fog (and crows) out my window. Yet, this novel also had a boldly strange twist that is hard to define (some are calling David Lynch-esque). At times, it had me looking up and around from my book wondering "did I just read that right?"

With a promise of a nautical voyage and whale chasing, I was not expecting a mystery like the one that unfolded. The characters were complicated and rich (and odd); they alone could have carried a story. And the language was beautiful and intelligent -- I am sure there were many double meanings and references that I didn't catch. Yet it was the mystery -- and its sordid details -- that kept me turning the pages, sometimes too fast I think to pick up everything that was being put down for the reader.

[thewanderingjew · Rating 2 out of 5]

In its basic concepts, the book comes down to a story about the Rathbones, a whaling family, their wives and descendants. It covers about 100 years, from the mid 1700’s to the mid 1800”s. The book is narrated by Mercy Rathbone, as she and Mordechai Rathbone, whom we meet as her cousin and tutor, search for her father and brother who had disappeared years ago. We discover the history of the family, side by side with them, basically by piecing together journals, logs, conversations, and interviews that create a family tree. The search takes them far and wide, to places like Mouse Island where they discover great-great aunts they didn’t know existed, to a sinking island and a cave with a strange woman who communicates with the birds on her island.
The history concentrates on the heirs of Moses. Moses was actually found, orphaned, adrift in a barrel in the sea, by Aaron Rathbone, and the barrel theme recurs as does the theme of crows, although the reason is obscure for most of the book. The Rathbone men, chiefly led by Moses, basically attracted women and brought them home to bear more male children to work on the whaling ships. After the women ended their child-bearing years, they were exiled to Mouse Island where they lived together. Oddly, they seemed content with this arrangement.
In their quest, Mercy and Mordechai are introduced to relatives they did not know existed, and they learn about extraordinary events and family secrets. However, the story seems to bounce around in time and place, between their current time and the past that they learn about. There seems to be no clear division of time or place, so that sometimes, I wasn’t sure exactly when the character being discussed changed, with another taking center stage in another time and place.
Perhaps the track of the time would be clearer in the written book form; perhaps there is a family tree actually drawn in for reference and a map included which traces their travels, and then, perhaps not. I listened to the audio book, and although there were several readers, the rare alternate voices were not that unique to the characters as in some audio books, where the reader instantly knows who is speaking; for instance, both Mordechai and the ship’s captain speak in the same manner.
Too many revelations and too many fabrications cropped up, that later were reversed, and I began to lose interest in the story. By the time the truth was revealed, the route was so circuitous that I had tired of it and had no interest in discovering it, nor could I remember the trail leading the way or even why it was important! In addition, the use of marine language about the whaling industry and the sea was beyond me, and it was not elucidated. This problem might be better addressed in the printed book so that the reader could make notes, look up information and then look back at the page to clear up any confusing terminology.
The allusions to magic and fantasy and hints at the supernatural, with Mercy’s gifted eyesight and perhaps her second sight, and crows that could lift her and defend her, were not that engaging
There were too many characters, and which wife was married to what brother and which child belonged to which wife, held no charm for me. Although, it was very imaginative and creative, at times I couldn’t tell if I was reading something referencing the Greek myths, or the Bible, with the baby rescued from the sea by Aaron, or the Puritans with names like Patience, Verity and Constance. There were many allusions to the myths, with insinuations of sirens, singing in the night, women in caves, and a ship named Argo, with the Stark sisters who became the wives of the brothers and were called the Golden Girls and were blamed for the downfall of the family.
I know I am bucking the tide because most readers really liked the book, but in the end, it all seemed a bit incoherent to me, with the thoughts racing against each other in time line and theme.

[GoldGato · Rating 4 out of 5]

After completing this book, I felt I had just stepped off that Mr. Toad ride at Disneyland. Funky and freaky. Gothic and nautical. Squirmy and psychedelic.

Hit me with your rhythm stick!

Using the travels of Odysseus as her broomstick, Janice Clark has created a gothic seaboard world of dubious ancestral ties and longings not fully understood by the story's young heroine. Saltwater may just as well be swishing on the paper, because the sea is everywhere, pulling the characters and the reader back to the clam shells from which we all were born. Islands appear and then disappear, families trade physical beauty for ancient Egyptian table settings, and the tale of Moses, Mercy, and Mordecai weave a spell that is hard to break.

...a glance at Roderick's sister...showed me that the ugliness had only been lying in wait like an eel in its cave.

Melville, Poe, Lovecraft, even Washington Irving are influences here, and I loved it. Surely, there are more intelligent readers who can assign some between-the-lines reading, but I simply enjoyed the adventure and the, uh, weirdness. Old worn former wives who live on an offshore island. Young golden boys whose eye sockets flood with the colour of the green of the Atlantic. Whales who willingly sacrifice themselves to saner Ahabs.

C'est fantastique. Hit me! Hit me!

Book Season = Autumn (East Coast specialty)

[Debra Hennessey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads. I really wanted to like it but I couldn't find anything to care about in the characters or the story. The mix of history and fantasy just didn't work. It seemed lifeless and contrived. Having said that I know I'm a minority opinion so it could be your cup of tea.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book that is basically entertaining but bothered me so much. There are passages such as "a honeymoon on which he traveled only to her golden cove" - (maybe just a difference in taste). Clark skipped the realism part of magic realism. Comments about a school of flounder swimming at the top of deep water ( a much larger creature passing deep below them), manatees in Connecticut, Penguins at the North Pole (this is somewhat vindicated later), characters speaking of Mendel's experiments a few years before they were published and decades before they were taken seriously, and a swordfish of such exceptional size that it "must have weighed more than the boy who caught it" (an unexceptional swordfish can top 200lbs), and the fact that a family ruined in part by incest is saved at the end by more incest. I never could decide if the book was just very sloppy or if this collection of impossibilities and improbabilities were by design.

The real problem isn't this collection of nitpicks - these only stand out because the characters are rather impersonal and the story stutters like a stack of set pieces crammed together rather than a cohesive narrative. I also had trouble finding meaning in the book, whether or not the fall of the Rathbones is due to genetics or some damnation by a mystical force comes up several times. But this felt unresolved at the end of the book. Did I miss an important clue or did the author fail to resolve it or or did I just mistake sloppiness for conflict?

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mercy is the last of the Rathbones, a whaling family of over 100 years, and she and her uncle Mordecei are on the run. Her father disappeared years ago and she thinks she remembers a brother, but no one will talk about him. When she finds her mother, on the widow walk carnally engaged by another man, who spots Mercy and chases her, she and Mordecei take the skiff and leave their home.

This novel is said to be a combination of the Odyssey, Moby Dick with trace of Poe and I can see the comparisons. Having lived off the plunder of the sperm whale, the sources are diminished and the family must go further than ever to find any signs of the whale. On Mercy and Mordecei's travels we meet many strange people along the way, as Mercy tries to find out if her father is alive. Which brings us to the mystery part,

This was interesting, the characters unique, much, actually a bit too much about whales, and it sometimes is tedious too read about a hundred years in the life of a family, and it is one strange family let me tell you. So this was okay, parts interesting, parts I really liked and parts I skipped through but I do applaud this author for delivering a story that is certainly unique.

[Isaac Alder · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rathbones was a true delight, from start to finish, and earned a well-deserved 4 Stars. The debut novel by Janice Clark captured a fantastic, almost magical quality harkening back to The Odyssey with a classic Gothic twist. Some things were better than others, all of which I discuss below.

To check out more of my book reviews, please visit my blog: https://isaacalder.wordpress.com

Pros:
- From the outset, Clark paints a very vivid, albeit bleak, picture of this strange world. A reader does not require a particularly vivid imagination to perfectly conjure a mental image of what she describes. I am typically a big fan of setting and the “feeling” of a novel, so this was a huge boon for me. Between the incredibly thorough research and sheer artistry of writing, I was hooked. By the end of the first chapter I was ready to hop on an old boat and sail out to suffer the New England waters.
- I strongly admire “the classics,” and because of that I give major credit to Clark’s ability to emulate the style of a classic Gothic story while presenting it in a fresh, modern way. Several people have complained in other reviews about the excessive creepiness or slow pace; I think these are all byproducts of the genre, and can be expected or even (to a few) appreciated.
- There’s no other way to really say this, but the novel is just well-written, plain and simple. I was ensnared in the story, completely wrapped up in what it had to offer. There were some twists, some which were obvious but only held a deeper secret, and some which kept me guessing through to the very end.

Cons:
- The most noticeable issue was one of pace. Not so much the overall pace of the novel as the weird sensation of irregular time movements. Chronological jumps were common and okay as long as they were nicely flagged, but sometimes it was hard to tell what was a flashback, an observation, or a sudden jump to the future within one paragraph. In these instances, it could be very disorienting.
- There is a lot of wiggle room I provided based on the style of writing, especially around characters. But if I am being honest (which I suppose I should be), the character development was a bit flawed. Certain behaviors contrasted established personalities, or no firm personalities were really established. Character motivations were highly questionable in many cases, and it was hard to connect with the secondary characters.
- More of a fair warning than necessarily a con, but this book requires some unanticipated suspension of disbelief. While not necessarily “magical,” there are some things which happen that rouse a scoff from us sceptics. Particularly related to the relative strength of a crow and the life expectancies of particular women, among other things. So if you have a huge issue with things that are a touch unrealistic, then consider this a strong con. If you really don’t care, or even like that, then slide this over to the pros.

Would I Recommend?
The pros clearly outweigh the cons. There are certain things to consider, but most of the flaws I found are pretty easy to overlook. Some other reviewers pointed out cons that are, in my opinion, more based on genre and whether or not the book is “your cup of tea.” If you’ve gotten this far in the review and are still interested, then definitely buy it. If you don’t like it, pawn it off to a friend who might better enjoy Poe, Dickens, and Melville on a whale-hunting epic.

[Confessionalpoetess · Rating 5 out of 5]

All I can say is, WOW! Just, wow! Janice Clark has written a truly unique and engrossing novel, and I found myself staying up late at night, eager to race towards the ending! The Rathbones is a mesmerizing tale of a secretive and bizarre family of whalers and sea captains living in coastal Connecticut in the mid-1800s. It's the story of 15-year-ols Mercy Rathbone, marooned in a large and solitary home with a melancholy and perhaps mentally ill mother, and a variety of strange relatives. Mercy pesters her mother for information on her father as well as her brother, who sailed with her father on a whaling expedition. Her mother, however, insists Mercy never had a brother. Mercy's mother has disconnected from everything around her as she obsessively waits for Mercy's father, who left years ago, to return home. Mercy's mute twins uncles and cousin Mordecai round out what's left of a once large and prosperous family.

One night, Mercy encounters a strange man in the house, making his way towards her mother. Mercy flees to the attic where Mordecai hides himself away. Alarmed, Mercy's cousin grabs her by the hand and they flee for their lives. Thus starts Mercy's adventure as she searches for her father and brother. Mercy is certain she had a brother, and wants to discover the truth about what happened to her father and him. Mordecai longs to find his uncle, desperate to join him on an expedition at sea. They encounter a variety of characters, some benevolent, some not. As Mercy moves closer to the truth she seeks, her family's long and melancholy history is revealed, and the answers she's looking for may change her world forever.

part Moby Dick, part Odyssey, the book alternates between Mercy's quest in the present, and a variety of Rathbone ancestors in the past. Several tales are interspersed throughout the book, beginning with family patriarch Moses Rathbone. Strange and barbaric, he possesses a preternatural ability to find whales, and becomes very rich from the whaling trade. The subsequent tales follow several generations of Mercy's ancestors, slowly peeling away at the mystery and deceit that permeates this unfortunate family.

As family facts and secrets are slowly revealed to the reader through flashbacks and letters, Mercy herself slowly gains new information about her family. Each story brings us closer to the truth and enlightens Mercy and the reader. This device was both tantalizing and frustrating; frustrating because the closer Mercy came to discovering the truth, the more I wanted to find out as well. Each flashback seemed like an interruption at first, but soon drew me with their fascinating narrative and sometimes explosive revelations. each one was crucial to the book's final outcome.

The book's gothic and archaic narrative is a perfect reflection of its time and setting. In particular I enjoyed the close and touching relationship between Mercy and Mordecai, who really only have each other to lean on. I wondered the whole time how this book could possible end; the conclusion was much more satisfactory than I could have hoped for. I look forward to more of Janice Clark's work.

[laristas · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is not for the faint of heart.

do not read this if you are going to compare it to every whaling story, family epic, or magical realisism novel that you maybe perhaps remember reading for some college class or another.

because really? those are those books, and this is this book. and you are no longer the person you once were, when you read (or pretended to read) all those other books.

do not read this if you are going to be squeamish about the roles of women, or the limitations that men sometimes set for women, especially for those women who they supposedly love.

do not read this is you are going to get angry at the characters - especially the female characters - for accepting the limitations placed on them. you are you, and these women are these women. just because you read this book, doesn't mean that you have to set your life up to be just like theirs.

do not read this if you are going to be squeamish about the limitations of a mother's love for her child, her children, her daughter. it's STILL not all about you, you know.

do, however, read this book if you are interested in moving... "into it, under the surface, looking for what was lost," (page 352). because that's exactly what you are going to get.

mercy has her memories, her impressions, even the things she thinks she knows. but once she starts asking the questions, allowing herself to wonder, looking again at things she thought she knew already, an amazing new world is revealed to her - and to us.

that was a lovely thing about this book for me - the discovery, right along with mercy, of the true things that happened in her past. and then we learned truer things, and then even more truer things were revealed. and at the end... well, let me just say that the truest and most satisfying thing at all is created at the end.

how can a thing be even truer than the thing before? you will have to read this book and find out.

but don't be a wimp about it. it's not nice.

plus, it's wimpy.

[Erin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Finished this in September but hadn't had a chance to add a few comments. First, I was completely duped into buying this book at the bookstore because 1. I loved the cover and 2. There was a little blurb by Erin Morgenstern right on the front. I should know by now not to fall for these, but, I did.

Anyhow, this is the strangest book (and not strange in a good way, but just plain bizarre.) It's goes through several generations of a family that is both polygamist and incestuous and for the most part, while living in this giant house do not interact or have and dialogue with each other.

Here are the main reasons I did not like this book:
The beginning really seemed to drag on for me. The author goes overboard (no pun intended) on the use of nautical terms throughout the narrative. The girl narrating does not use language that you would expect of someone that age. The absolutely bizarre lack of dialog is frustrating. They go through all of these experiences barely speaking at all. Without giving anything away, I DO NOT GET the reasoning behind the parents on the widow's walk letting the girl witness what she does.

Now a couple of factual items that really bothered me. 1. When rowing a boat in the Atlantic off the coast of Conn. you CANNOT see the sandy bottom of the ocean. 2. At one point the rowboat is in a storm and gets cracked by the oar hitting the bottom but not at all when it is crashing up against. the rocks. 3. PENGUINS DO NOT LIVE AT THE NORTH POLE. Seriously, my kids even know that. How on earth did this get through all of the reviews/edits????!!!!

I will admit that i got hooked on seeing what would happen. Especially how the "family tree" is built. But the ending is just a let down because nothing really seems to be resolved and the main character ironically goes on to marry a family member and this completely messed up family just continues on....

[Ashley Arthur · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book from GoodReads giveaway listed by Doubleday.

Mercy Rathbone knows almost nothing about her family. Her father disappeared during a whaling excursion. Mama is cold and distant, preferring to create sculptures from whale bones than to educate her daughter. Mercy’s twin brother, whose name she has never known, is dead, and the only thing Mama will say about him is, “He was too small, so we threw him back.” Mercy’s uncle and tutor, Mordecai, dissects specimens and memorizes captain’s logs in the attic and hardly ever descends into the main house. All in all, Mercy has spent her life watching the sea and waiting for answers. But when an unexpected visitor comes for Mama, Mercy witnesses something she cannot understand, and she and Mordecai take to the ocean to find her father and learn the truth about her brother. Along the way, Mercy learns the strange history of the Rathbones and her own parents, and she has to decide what to do with the truth once she knows it.

It’s hard to explain why I liked this book because, honestly, it was really weird. Also, the description of the book made it sound like a modernized version of the Odyssey. This was true for the parts about the book narrated by Mercy, but at least half of the book is a series of flashbacks that tell the story of the Rathbone family’s rise to whaling glory and their inevitable decline. The book is also described by several reviewers as “gothic.” I don’t know that I really agree with that – to me, it seemed much more like magical realism. Clark’s writing is strongest when the characters are sailing, and she does a great job with metaphors about the sea. Whatever you want to call this book, and despite the fact that parts of it were absolutely bizarre, I really enjoyed it.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Rathbones is a gothic tale about the mystery of the Rathbone family, once a large and prosperous whaling clan. Mercy, a fifteen year old girl is in the Rathbone mansion which has suffered from decay. It is located on the sea in Connecticut and she has never left it. Her father has been on a whaling mission for ten years and has not returned in that time. Her mother walks the widow walk and looks for him. However, she is cold to Mercy and has a male friend who is scary and attempts to harm Mercy. Mercy, along with her cousin and tutor, Mordecai, arrange to leave their home in Connecticut and take a boat out to sea. They are chased by the mysterious man in blue but manage to get to Mouse Island which is populated by a large group of women who weave day and night. They welcome both Mercy and Mordicai and tell them something about their history and the importance of their sons for whaling.

Whaling was the sole occupation of Moses Rathbone, the progenitor of the Rathbone clan. He was said to have salt water in his veins and was one with the whales and the sea. He started a large fleet of whaling vessels manned by the sons of his many wives. As Mercy and Mordicai travel from island to island, they learn more and more about their family.

The story is told from different vantage points in time and by different people, primarily in the 18th and 19th century. <

To be quite honest, I had a lot of trouble following the book and can not say that it grabbed me to any extent. However, it is very unusual and well-written. I was just not that interested in the story of the Rathbones.
Comment

[Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've seen this book described as Moby Dick meets David Lynch. As a consumer of all of David Lynch's work, I'm not sure it's a great comparison. More Jane Campion than Lynch, I think. I guess it's a little like Moby Dick because it takes place in early New England and because there are whales.

This is a book for those who like their historical fiction with a touch of surrealism. Despite getting off to a slow start, and containing passages so vague I was almost lost, I enjoyed this book. Essentially, it's the story of a girl trying to piece together her strange and mysterious family history. Clark has a dreamy writing style that really works, most of the time. I am fascinated with early American maritime history and particularly in whaling stories, and so a lot of the story really resonated with me. The bizarre marriage rituals of the Rathbone family will interest some readers more.

[Janellyn51 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was kind of whacked. Mercy, and her travels put me in mind of Alice in Wonderland at times. I was kind of fascinated with the whole thing. I've always had an interest in New England whaling, and more in the sea or going to sea itself. I'm descended from a crusty sailor named Phineas Pratt. I know when I'm ramped up, I need to sit by the water and it takes me down several notches. This is a generational book, with a bunch of nutty characters. I developed a fondness for old Bemus, more than anyone else. He seemed the most forthright character. I think if I lived in times past, I would have somehow been involved in the sea, whether on it or waiting for someone. I was especially intrigued with the portion when Mordecai and Mercy land at the Stark Archipelago, the descriptions of the elder Starks, again, could have been characters in Wonderland. While the basic premise of the book is kind of sick, I did really enjoy it!

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've never read anything like this. Set in a bizarrely constructed house on the shores of Noank CT, Mercy Rathbone discovers the story of her family's long and twisted history. There are albinos, whales, a group of old discarded wives who live on an island together, an attic made from a ship's hull, crows, more whales, seven brides for seven carpenters, and a well-used widow's walk. There's enough in this that you don't want to give away too much. Some parts are a little squicky, but it's enchanting and fascinating.

The audiobook was well done, with three narrators, including a young boy. I really enjoyed listening to this, and while I think I would have enjoyed it in print, the audio really made it for me.

[Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I read about this a few months ago, I was super excited and ordered it for my library and suggested it for my book club. Now I feel bad about all those things. The elements for something amazing are all here, but the text is an absolute chore to get through. I kept reading this only for the purpose of having something to say at the book club. While there are some enjoyable parts, and even very occasionally some lovely writing, the majority is tedious and boring. I read plenty of books about topics that I don't find interesting, but great writers can make me care about them, and I didn't care about any of this. I do kind of wonder if it could make an awesome Terry Gilliam movie, though.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

audio book

I picked this up only because of Erin Morgenstern's blurb. It is a marvelous book, but not one I will recommend to everyone. It is moody and weird and confusing (especially in the beginning). But so very good at the same time. I think I might have liked it earlier if I had been reading it instead of listening to it because it skips around in time periods and if you aren't paying close attention it is easy to get lost. But now, almost at the end, I am loving the story and the characters in all their weirdness. There is a great deal about whales too, so anyone who is prone to Moby Dick induced flashbacks may want to avoid this one.

[Marcie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book has a theme song that is repeated throughout, but I have given it a different one: “I’m My Own Grandpaw.” There’s just so. much. incest. While I could see the reasoning behind most of it, it was a big turn-off that wasn't helped by the fact that I didn't like much else about the book either. I’m giving this one star because the writing was good, but the plot was boring, and there were no likeable characters. The only reason I tried to finish this was because I was reading it for a book club.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read slowly because I didn't want the story of the Rathbone family to end. Mercy Rathbone and her cousin Mordecai go on a sea journey reminiscent of Homer's Odyssey to uncover the secrets of their old whaling family and find out what became of Mercy's father and brother. Elements of mythology and magical realism as well as a sea adventure and coming-of-age story. Especially delightful for those of us who live in the Noank area and for me in particular as my sister is the author.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd. Different. Strange. Weird. But very engaging.

[Yasmin · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a previous reviewer said it is a very bizarre book. It chases its tail around, rather like a dog, not a whale. The Rathbone family whether in England or in North America were from moneyed stock, in reality, and were hardy and prospered. Now for some spoiler alerts: The book also makes for confusion and while the narrator, Mercy, has some of her questions answered, that she didn't vocally ask and one feels should have tried harder to, there are more questions for the reader, maybe just this reader! Moses Rathbone wish was to fill a whaling ship with his sons as crew. Well a woman at her healthiest gives birth to a child in nine months, in the story the earliest Rathbone child wouldn't have been help to his father until four years of age. Also Moses Rathbone was the only one of his kind so then who are the other older Rathbones while his sons Bow-Oar, Second-Oar and Third-Oar are young? Then of course what happened to the other male born children in between them and Erastus and Verity? How odd it is for the old regulation of drowning baby girls there was a kindness shown to all the wives that had been wedded to Moses once the majority stopped having healthy baby boys. All these convenient mystery islands not too far away from Rathbone House. And no one was really bothered, in the story, about the incest. Another reviewer was right there is a lot of it. Somewhere in this there is a whaling story and although very much the idea of whaling is abhorrent to most people nowadays, it is a part of history, for many of our ancestors they wouldn't have been able to cope without it. Whale oil was in lamps, whale oil greased things, to some desperate individuals it was a source of food. Whales were hunted to near extinction, whaling was a livelihood to many, whether they were the whalers or the men that demanded the commodity no matter how many lives were put at risk. It was a profitable industry and filled many rich men's coffers, it also destroyed lives, be it the whaling men or be it the whaling wives and little children left behind. For a further history lesson babies milk bottles didn't come into feature until 1840. For another history lesson the Emperor of France was exiled for the last time in his life in 1815, Mercy's father and brother wouldn't have been there even in a curious fantasy. The biggest question of course is where were the pirates? Wikipedia tells us pirates were only in the rivers in North America and wouldn't have then come across our characters at any time in the waters of the U.S. Well perhaps if you believe that you would believe anything. If not in the waters near Rathbone house the pirates would have always been lurking in the seas that held the whale. For rich treasure such as whale oil I don't believe any pirate in his lop-sided mind would have not attempt to attack and steal the precious cargo especially if the whale boats burnt the whales on board straight away. I never feel a seafaring tale is complete without pirates lurking around the edges if not directly in the fray, as the human sharks they were. In the end there are no pirates and not much on the whales themselves nor how dangerous and challenging an occupation that was. The whaling experiences are only lightly brushed upon and it's highly improbable that any limb would be taken from a whaler or if it did, rare thing, the human couldn't survive, there is no gentle little plucking here and there like Captain Hook from Peter Pan and the whole child being swallowed accidently by a whale is right up there with I don't think so! This story is down right fishy, stinks to high heaven! Well it would with only one sea shanty to its name and hardly a mention of other sea creatures by name or much by dint. I'd say candidly that Ms. Janice Clark evidently spent more time in pizza parlours than fishing out about whaling history that these two things existed in Mystic, Connecticut, or else the old fisher folk were not telling her many stories and her local library must have been right out of marine stories!

[Marie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Morons go sailing....

So let me back up and tell a short story. My dad picked up The Heart of the Sea in an airport bookstore and read it on a plane. He got home, asked if I wanted it, and I said sure. (Is there any other answer when someone offers you a book?) Then he told me that it wasn't great, and that he thought a better title would have been Morons Go Sailing. I have this thing about reading every book I own/am given, and The Heart of the Sea really didn't look too long, so I read it. Yup: it was a long, detailed tale of the actual crew and actual voyage that inspired Moby Dick. And yup: these guys took every decision-making opportunity and made the wrong decision. Hence, Morons Go Sailing. Then I started thinking, and I remembered that I didn't actually enjoy Moby Dick either. Or Jamrach's Menagerie. Or Life of Pi. But all three of those did get some rave reviews.... So all that to say, maybe books that involve sea voyages just aren't for me. And to tell you a funny story about how my dad and I reclassify books that involve sea voyages that we don't enjoy.

Again: I want to emphasize that maybe the fault is with me. Maybe I'm just genetically predisposed to not enjoy sailing books.

The Rathbones is also about family. (Like the start of my review!) But it is not a happy tale. It's a multigenerational odyssey, as experienced by Mercy, fourteen and the last in a long line of Rathbones. She has grown up in a huge and largely empty house; it has beds enough to sleep many dozen, but is currently only occupied by her, her mother, and her cousin. On the brink of becoming a woman, she is starting to question: where is her father? Did he really abandon the family, or is he lost at sea? Who is her cousin's mother? Why is he kept locked up in the attic? One night, Mercy and her cousin witness a strange man come to the house and attack her mother on the widow's walk. They flee, and thus begins their quest across the ocean in search of genealogical answers and the ever more rare sperm whales.

This book demands the reader's full attention. From the first chapter, you will find yourself intrigued and just as interested in finding answers as Mercy is. The answers come, but they are doled out sparingly across the pages, like a feeble trail of breadcrumbs leading you onward. I read an ARC, so I'm not sure this feature remained in the final copy, but in my copy there were four family trees spaced pretty evenly through the book. The first one is very, very spare, with a lot of blank space in the middle. As the book progresses, Mercy is able to fill in more and more of the blank space. I really appreciated that, as I would have been completely lost without them! The Rathbones are a LARGE family.

I don't know how to say this, but The Rathbones is kind of literarily (I think I just made up that word) pretentious. The language is a bit heavy-handed, and many scenes feel only partially developed. Like the night that Mercy and her cousin leave home; the way the scene is described, I wasn't even sure if the stranger was real, or a figment of Mercy's imagination. Was he physically assaulting Mercy's mother, or were they engaged in consensual lovemaking? And there are many more scenes that left me grasping at mist.

I would recommend this to people who love history and whaling and family sagas and puzzling out the deeper meaning of books. I would not recommend this to the casual reader.

[Paul Pessolano · Rating 2 out of 5]

“The Rathbones” by Janice Clark, published by Doubleday.

Category – Fiction/Literature Publication Date – August 06, 2013

“The Rathbones” is the story of a whaling family in New England during the height of the whaling industry. The story follows the plight of the family from when they made a fortune from hunting whales to when whaling no longer was a profitable industry.

The story is told through the eyes of Mercy Rathbone, who is now the sole remaining member of the family. Mercy tells her story as she attempts to locate her father who has been missing for nine years. She is helped by her uncle Mordecai, who has been a recluse and somewhat of a family historian. Mercy finds that the Rathbones were a family totally dedicated to the whaling industry, so much so, that the men lived only to hunt the whale and see that they fathered children to take their place when the time came. The lives of the family were so rigid that husband and wife almost maintained separate lives. The women were housed on the second story of their home and were not permitted to leave except for a small garden. When a child was born it was taken from its mother at an early age to live with the men so that they would not be spoiled and began to take up the whaling trade. The Rathbones became very rich but found themselves in an industry that was on a rapid decline. It is during this time that Mercy begins to look into her family history. Mercy and Mordecai embark on a long journey that the secrets of the family are revealed and the undoing of the Rathbone dynasty.

I found the book to be long, laborious, and unfulfilling. Although I did finish the book, when I finally got to the end I had to admit that I didn’t believe it was worth the trip.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not for the first time, I wish that GoodReads offered a half-star option, because this book really deserves more than four stars; in fact, I've delayed reviewing this book for more than a week because I couldn't decide which way to go (I know...get a life, right?!!). I've opted for the lower rating because I wasn't captivated by this book from the very beginning—in fact, I thought it was very odd and only persisted because I had a feeling that reading it would be worth the investment—and also because, although I enjoyed it immensely and thought it beautifully written for the most part, there were brief times that I found myself slogging through a few pages and also passages or sentences that made me roll my eyes.

But the story—the story.... Janice Clark has taken a bit of Greek saga (and, I'm thinking, some history) and a bit of Moby Dick> and a bit of literature of which I know nothing (a guess) and perhaps a big of forgotten New England history (I've no idea), and come up with something totally original. There are certain elements of this book that I am unlikely to forget.

However, I'm not going to go on and on, because this book has been well reviewed by Jen (see her review dated 23 December 2013, below), with whose assessment I thoroughly agree. I will reiterate that this book is not for everyone; there were moments when I thought, “Is this really happening here? Whaaat? No. Yes, that's what is going on.”

But if you're looking for an original and memorable story, check it out. Give it 30 pages or so, get beyond the beginning, and decide whether it's worth your time. I believe that it is.