Call Me Ishmaelle

by Xiaolu Guo

Moby-Dick reimagined from the perspective of a cross-dressed female sailor

'Brilliantly written... ambitious, brave, strange' Philip Hoare
'One of the most valuable writers in the world' Deborah Levy

1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.

Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from a female perspective. As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest.

Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick. Xiaolu Guo has crafted a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Retellings, Audiobook, Novels, Literary Fiction, China

448 pages, Paperback

Expected publication January 6, 2026

About the author

Xiaolu Guo (Simplified Chinese: 郭小櫓 pinyin:guō xiǎo lǔ, born 1973) is a Chinese novelist and filmmaker. She utilizes various media, including film and writing, to tell stories of alienation, introspection and tragedy, and to explore China's past, present and future in an increasingly connected world.

Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers was nominated for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. She was also the 2005 Pearl Award (UK) winner for Creative Excellence.

Reviews

[Madeleine · Rating 2 out of 5]

You’ve heard of ‘No Fear Shakespeare’! Now introducing: ‘No Fun, Less Well Done, What The Hell(ville)? Melville’. Listen – I tried hard to love this book, and if not to love it than respect it. I am a big big fan of Moby Dick. I have to assume the author of Call Me Ishmaelle is too.

But unfortunately: I didn’t enjoy this at all. I’ve rounded up to 2 stars but really in terms of my enjoyment it sits at about a 1.5. And retellings and reimaginings are always complicated business for me: there has to be the exact right balance of something old / something new. It has to capture the spirit of the original and simultaneously transform it, in form or style or perspective, to tell a new story.

And I felt like that balance was not pulled off here. For the first three chapters, it introduced an English girl, swiftly orphaned and almost alone in the world: it bore very little resemblance to Moby Dick, but I was enjoying it in its own right! And then, Ishmaelle... goes to New Bedford. Why? Well, mostly because Melville’s narrative dictates it, I guess – that’s the starting point of his story, and so our Ishmaelle is buffeted along by the winds of fate or the puppet strings of Moby Dick, stuck in the long shadow of the narrative that came before because ??? I don’t know. Why would this English Ishmaelle not go whaling in the North sea or something instead? Why do the rest of the events of the plot unfold as they do, in Moby Dick’s very particular beats? It just never feels driven by the characters in quite the same way here.

And if the plot is hardly ‘reimagined’, the rest of the characters aren’t either. Names are changed, and Ahab’s background is slightly altered, but essentially Queequeg becomes Kauri, Starbuck becomes Drake, etc: the off-brand stock versions of themselves. Guo’s additions to the original are: a little more political correctness in describing race and religion, although the diversity is not new; a new focus on Taoism, with Muzi’s character, which I liked and thought WAS inventive!!; and the gender-swapped main character, along with some added rape.

I have already read a fair few books of women/non-binary/genderfluid/trans men running away to sea to explore their gender (e.g. I read that Mary Read retelling just last year; Ally Wilkes’ All The White Spaces has a trans MC), and while I DO like a ship as a cool microcosm of a setting for it, the execution of this gender exploration here really didn’t sit well with me?? It all felt oddly bioessentialist and reductive? Her womanhood is usually considered in regard to her period; being penetrated; collecting herbs for healing purposes; being surrounded by a world of violent men. By the end, Ahab is calling her a witch. And yes, this all aligns Ishmaelle with the white whale – hunted, harpooned, mystical. Maybe I’m missing her point. Maybe that was the point?

No, I’m not done yet. Let’s talk about the writing, why don’t we? I would love to say Guo is a good writer (particularly as I think English is her second language)... but it’s hard to fucking tell!!! Here is where the novel again cleaves too closely to the original: almost every time I actively enjoyed the cadence of a sentence or a thought or a funny line, it wasn’t one of Guo’s. It was cribbed directly from Melville. SO MUCH of this novel – the full trajectory of the plot, and whole sentences and paragraphs and scenes – is just a condensed and simplified rewriting of Melville,. (I ended up essentially reading them in tandem, pages side by side.) So all the character and humour and eccentricity and philosophy is often more to Melville’s credit than Guo’s, which is kind of disappointing, because again: where is the imagination in the reimagining? I liked that Guo kept the moments of eccentric experimentation with form and style – that felt like a homage to Melville without just being a word-for-word reproduction – but I also wish she had let Ishmaelle breathe a little on her own whaling quest instead.

So in the end I felt like this version actually lost more of the magic of Moby Dick than it gained in the reimagining. And I might be in the minority (and maybe if you hated Moby Dick this is a better book for you), but I’d rather read the original any day.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[asv:n · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book having over 400 pages, this was an absolute page turner. redefining MOBY DICK in the perspective of a girl who had to pretend like a boy, Xiaolu Guo has shown genuine respect to Herman Melville, creating an epic novel filled with adventure and literary genius. Ishmaelle, a small English girl, after her life is thrown astray due to the cruel play of fate, decides to change her own fate by going against the flow of the customs and traditions. attracted to the act of whale-hunting, Ishmaelle tries to become a member of the whaling crew, but gets disappointed by the fact that women aren't allowed to be part of the crew. left with no choice, she cuts her hair short, put on her brothers old rags and starts to live as a young man. and soon, part of a whaling crew. and the adventure begins there.

Not a moment I felt bored when I read tis book. pages after pages, my curiosity grew, as she met Kauri- a Polynesian prince who took an oath to be the armor of her- and stayed with her, even when he realized she wasn't the man he met. As they rode Nimrod into the uncharted waters, looking for whales, when the crew realized that she was a girl, when they all kept her safe and saw her as one of them- as their equal. and when the white pearl water frothed and streaked, gleaming the tail of the white ghost. MOBY DICK.

I'm grateful to the author that she portrayed Moby Dick as it truly would be, surviving the brutality of humanity a million times and yet living gracefully in the dark depth of the ocean, never once surrendering to the whalers. Carrying the countless harpoons that pierced through his flesh as victory marks and coming up to the surface as the refresher of the instigated fear among the seamen. I hope he had a calm death and finally got a chance to rest in peace. i hope the white ghost finally escaped the eyes of greed that surveilled him on the surface.

this will be one among the books i would recommend to people who love classics and enjoy contemporary fiction as well. i don't think anyone would ever feel this book as anywhere near boring and i'm excited to read the other works of the author!

thank you Grove Atlantic and NG for sending me the advanced readers copy of this book!

[gracie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Retellings are always a tricky thing for me to enjoy because it needs to strike a balance between the original source material and the author's creative changes. Call me ishmaelle fails flat on this front because not only do a lot of the changes not make logistical sense to me but the author lifts so many direct quotes and passages from Moby Dick. I'm not even halfway through and I'm exhausted. I will say that the author is a good writer though, their writing style is easy to read and get lost in while not being overly basic

[peg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Continuing to read novels eligible for the Booker Longlist which will be announced next week. This book is a solid NO as for my thinking it should be on the list! A retelling of Moby Dick with a female main character, the writing was so simplistic and the characters so surface in their description that it doesn't even seem like Literary Fiction. Perhaps it would have been more palatable to read a different plot altogether so that the comparison to Melville's masterpiece wouldn't be there to showcase its shortcomings! 2*

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Retellings/Reimaginings are difficult undertakings because it is only when the two are skillfully blended together that the magic happens; if the scales are tipped either way the narrative derails and loses its chance of that magic. It can become a simple retelling (e.g. just changing the names of the established characters) and parroting the narrative of the source novel. Or, if the scales are tipped too much toward a reimagining, the narrative strays so far from the original story that the power of those connecting threads to its inspiration is lost – the story becomes unmoored, and both novel and reader lose their way, no longer able to see, feel, and appreciate that connection.

This year, I have read 3 novels that take on this challenge. In Percival Everett’s James, we have an excellent example of a successful blending of reimagining and retelling. It takes the story of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, changes the viewpoint to Jim, and in the course of doing so, Everett greatly expands and adds a layered depth to that world, and its world view, while still keeping its connecting threads to the original narrative. It is a masterful accomplishment of a very difficult undertaking.

In Empusium, Olga Tokarczuk takes on the powerful Magic Mountain, the story of the slow indoctrination of a young man into the hive mind of the sanitorium to which he has come to battle tuberculosis. It mirrors the insidious and ultimately catastrophic hive mind that evolved during the current events of that time. In her own novel, Tokarczuk does a creditable job of balancing retelling with reimagining, applying a different and interesting take on this slow indoctrination. Where her novel went wrong for me is that she failed to build that tension, the insidious force of the hive mind lurking below the surface of her narrative and thread it through her narrative. The “clues” are much too subtle and too disconnected to inspire dread or unease in the reader – there is no building of tension lurking beneath the surface. Indeed, the explosion of that hive mind only occurs in the final section of the book. The final course of events is imaginative yes; but it is an issue of too much too late. The reader has had no real opportunity to become invested in her reimagining until the end. So, for me, the book did not succeed. I felt instead that I had read an unsuccessful attempt to tap into the talents of Shirley Jackson – would have been more than ok with me.

Which brings me to Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo.

An excerpt from a book description reads as follows: “Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from a female perspective.”

I really wanted to read that book.

Taking on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is a bold and daunting task. This epic is Biblical, Wagnerian and Shakespearean in scope, all of which Melville was able to capture within the confines of a lone whaling ship battling and surviving in the swirling immensity of forces of nature it cannot control nor adequately defend itself from. It is one of my favorite books.

I was truly fascinated at the idea of an intrepid female, one with an intense passion for the sea, casting her fate to the winds, letting nothing get in her way, disguising herself as young boy, and signing on board a whaling ship knowing she would be at sea for 2 years. I wanted to immerse myself in experiencing that powerful story from a woman’s point of view…almost like being a fly on the wall, observing the entirely male, epic drama play out.

Unfortunately, this is not what actually happens.

That is not to say that I didn’t enjoy many parts of the narrative. The author has a rather charming, simplistic prose style (or it may just be a result of the translation). This style works very well in what I would call the non-action sections of the novel. I enjoyed the initial chapters where we learn a little about Ishmaelle. I appreciated Guo’s nod to the Shakespearian elements of the original…the “setting of scenes”, the internal reveries of the captain and other crew members; reveries which, if created for the stage, would be spoken soliloquies. The Ishmaelle dream sequences were indeed dreamy and sometimes surreal, the simple prose became almost lyrical. The descriptions of some of the island ports, looking for herbs, the workings of maintaining a ship, washing sails, making ropes, where one sleeps and under what conditions…all of these sections are very well done, were interesting to me and kept me invested in those moments.

Where the prose proved itself to be inadequate was the moment the whaling vessels were dropped into the sea and the chase for whales began. The intensity and energy of the original narrative was totally absent. The descriptions of the chases, small whaling vessels being smashed and broken, the loss of life; it was all told in such a flat, matter of fact, emotionless manner. In those sections, the book goes full into retelling mode, reading like an overly simplified, parroted and ultimately lifeless version of the masterful original.
I had other issues with the book. Ishmaelle goes to sea. Why? Why does she decide suddenly to board a vessel bound for America? The explanation that we are given is that she has developed quite a crush on a ship’s captain she met while exploring the docks.

But what really disappointed me was that the author didn’t really provide us with any depth to Ishmaelle. She exhibits no deep passion for the sea or for adventure. She is not portrayed as an intrepid explorer who is willing to cast her fate to the winds to pursue her dreams for new challenges and experiences. She provides no female or feminist perspective. Outside of the whale chases, Ishamaelle’s interior thoughts are primarily focused on making sure no one finds out she is female, and the most that is done with this subject is that she is mainly worried about secretively using the head and hiding her periods. In those moments where we could have really gotten to peel back the layers of her character, all we are met with is a young, fearful girl. Understandable, but we can’t get past that layer to see if there are any more layers to be found. She doesn’t take the experiences and make them her own; instead, she drifts through them. And then, toward the end, all of a sudden, she takes the lead in commanding one of the whaling boats during the final chase for the white whale?

I was disappointed that she was eventually exposed as female, and in the most predictable and degradable way possible. There were so many other ways to have accomplished this, but my question is: why expose her at all? Why not let her continue in her disguise and continue the narrative in a more consistent and empowering way? Why not let her keep her female power intact and under her control? For a book that describes itself as providing a feminist viewpoint, this course of events went off the rails for me.

Ishmaelle focuses a lot on the men continuing to call her Ishmael instead of Ishmaelle after they learn her gender. I didn’t find this particularly compelling. These men are hungry, tired and scared. Their captain is a madman; they are convinced they will not survive. Delving into the niceties of her name is hardly something they would focus on. They have called her Ishmael for months; the female derivation is closely similar. It appears that the men have been the ones who have progressed in their thinking. She is a team member, that’s what they think of her as. She is an equal. Is this perhaps what the book description is talking about? It may well be, but I didn’t get a strong impression of that.

I did find the introduction of a Taoist monk, who uses the I-Ching as a divination tool for the captain, an interesting addition to the narrative and I enjoyed how, in true Shakespearean manner, it served as a series of ominous portents that the captain, in the utter throes of his madness, ultimately ignored, thus sealing his fate and all those around him.

I also appreciated that Captain Seneca is a black man. He tragically lost his leg to the white whale, returns home, marries, only to face evil once more when his wife betrays their marriage, giving birth to a white child, a son to a white man he knows. In his tortured mind, this betrayal, the whiteness of it becomes a second evil in his life, and he becomes once more obsessed with destroying the white evil that he blames for all the events that followed in his life. I appreciated the subtlety of how Guo approached and embedded those themes in the narrative.

In addition to the I-Ching, I enjoyed the other magical elements of the novel; the slow bonding between whale and Ishmaelle. She dreams of whales, even observing a female giving birth and sensing its pain. That bonding between females (whale and human) during such a moving and powerful moment –– I loved that. And when Ishmaelle hears the great white whale, always sensing his presence, communing with him, bonding with him. I found myself wishing Guo had pushed the envelope by reimagining Moby Dick as female, intensifying the bond between females, while at the same time serving as a cohesive fuel for the Seneca’s rage…his wife’s betrayal with a white man, the loss of his leg, fusing a hatred of that white man and a betraying female into one white female creature. I would have loved that additional connection between Moby Dick and Ishmaelle. I mean, while you are reimagining, and you want these female elements, then lean into it and really go there. Why not?

I have heard this book described as one that explores gender, gender blending, queerish, feminist. I have seen the character Ishmaelle described as being “inimitable”. I personally found none of these elements in the book. Broken down, what we have here is a young girl who, for rather confusing reasons, decides to go to sea and wears boy’s clothes in order to accomplish this. She doesn’t wear those clothes because wearing male clothing makes her feel complete or whole in some way. She doesn’t express enjoyment that she feels more at home in that guise or that she identifies in a more male way. That persona doesn’t make her feel empowered – quite the opposite. In fact, she does everything she can to hide her gender right up until when it is ripped away from her. It is simply a means to an end and nothing more. There are literally hundreds of books, plays, operas (including historical accounts) that have been using this device for hundreds of years. And now we have one more. The author does attempt to introduce gender blending very late in the novel, but Ishmaelle rather suddenly referring to herself as Ishmael/elle or he/she isn’t convincing. And at the very end of the novel, back in Kent, she sheds the Ishmael persona, becoming firmly Ishmaelle. Or does she?

Because, one could say that at the end, Ishmaelle, within her innermost self, is not human female. And she has not become human male. Instead, she has become whale. Her transformation has come about through bonding with the whales in the story. She feels their presence, she understands their thoughts. She feels at one with them. She identifies with them.

The author introduced some fascinating and original ideas in Call Me Ishmaelle – I just wish she had leaned into them more.

Overall, despite my issues, I enjoyed the novel and would recommend it to those who enjoy Guo’s writing (I intend to read more of her) and as a very basic outline to Melville’s truly great novel.

I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Moby Dick retelling that I never knew I needed. Ishmaelle, is a girl, who dresses as a boy to join a ship to leave England and eventually joins up with the whaling ship Nimrod. Along the way, she meets the multicultural crew and captain, who, as well as all know, is obsessed with hunting the white whale. Full of grandeur and hardship, this was a whale of a tail.

I received an arc from the publisher but all opinions are my own.

[Tess Liebregts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Call me Ishmaelle sounded intriguing. Gender-swapping Ishmael opens up so many interesting avenues. I was interested in seeing how Ishmaelle would navigate the hyper-masculine whaling world and how her sex might affect her connection with characters such as Queequeg or Ahab.

Unfortunately, this story remained very surface-level, which was strange, because I imagine a lot can be told in over 400 pages. I was sceptical from the beginning. Firstly, because the whole purpose of the first sentence of Moby Dick ‘Call me Ishmael’ is showing that we might be dealing with an unreliable narrator. The narrator suggests we call him Ishmael, we do not in fact know if that is his name. Call me Ishmaelle starts with the same opening sentence (adding the -le), but then proceeds to tell us why she was named thus. This undermines the idea of an unreliable narrator, because this extra information understates that the reader should not only call her Ishmaelle, she is in fact called Ishmaelle.

The second thing that had me frowning, was the nationality of the main character. The author has chosen a British heroine for her story, instead of an American one. I am not exactly sure how her tragic backstory in England (of all places) added to the narrative of Moby Dick. This backstory, elaborate as it is, did exactly nothing to convince me why Ishmaelle would get on a whaling ship. She expresses little curiosity into this gruesome profession. She seems to go because of convenience for the plot.

When Ishmaelle finally reaches America the story starts to resemble Moby Dick, just missing its most interesting parts. So, it’s Moby Dick, but stripped of its richest moments. For example, a lot of the foreshadowing of the voyage is left out, like the sermon and the prophetic figure, Elijah, whilst these moment really set the tone. Also, Queequeg’s – now Kauri’s – role is reduced to a minor character. Reducing Queequeg to a minor role was disappointing to me, especially since the original relationship sets such an emotional anchor early in Moby Dick and remains important throughout the story, especially since it exposes and explores issues of racism. I felt like Call me Ishmaelle did dive into these racial issues, but mostly with characters that were not in Moby Dick. This baffled me, because why would you not use and explore the source material that is already there? Then you could just as well have written an original book with these new characters.

The exploration of womanhood was also very shallow and repetitive. Yes, Moby Dick is a very repetitive book. Ishmael describes the same things over and over again. Call me Ishmaelle did the same, but added regular descriptions of how Ishmaelle nearly got a period again and put a lot of emphasis on her empathy for the whales that were murdered. Girlie, if you are not ready for murdered whales, maybe you should not have been on a whaling voyage! I think the author tried to make the link between whale hunting and witch hunting. Sort of making a point that the men on this voyage treat women like they treat whales, but it was not written powerfully enough to have a meaningful impact.

Also, why rape? I am so tired of historical retellings with gender-swaps including rape. Is that all there is to add when you change a male perspective into a female one? It is so frustrating when a book that sets out to explore womanhood defaults to trauma, especially sexual trauma, as its defining narrative tool. That choice often feels more like a shortcut to ‘seriousness’ than a thoughtful engagement with character or theme. I also felt the sexual violence was added without depth or care. To me, it derailed any connection or curiosity I had about the story.

All in all, I felt like the retelling was more interested in surface-level gender politics than in actually transforming or interrogating the deeper structure and relationships of the original. Frustrating, especially when the premise had real potential.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely my favorite feminist retelling of Moby Dick.
There may only be 2 to choose from but this is still leagues ahead of the other. Without getting deeper into that (I made this whole account to review that one and I've still been unable to describe it), what I love about this is the perspective of the main character I expected very little, but all of these expectations were surpassed. Her non-american POV, the fact that she's very unromantic and frank about a lot of things, and feels solidly like her own character are things I loved. There's some of the usual feminist retelling 'not like other girls-' but in such a way that I don't think dominated most of the other characterization or narrative events. I enjoyed how the main character was written of thinking of her identity in ways that made sense for the time period. I also really enjoyed a lot of what was going on with other characters. My main problem with the whole story is that a lot happens to the main character that so heavily shocks the reader with her trauma, it starts to dull the affect of it, and while we have a lot of characters who we come to know very much about through the story, some of the ambiguous endings, I'm fine with, I even like, but many were less endings and more stories that were started and didn't go anywhere. While I do mostly enjoy the way this narrator admits she didn't know the full story behind a lot of what was going on, the mentioned back story of Jacques having saved Drake from drowning once which seems to have been completely abandoned by the time Jacques abandons the rest of the crew and Drake's reaction doesn't seem noteworthy at all felt very underwhelming. There were similar examples. I feel like most of these issues could have been resolved by the whole book and the story told in it taking longer, which naturally make sense when this was a retelling of Moby Dick. My expectation about all of that, if I had any of it described to me, and really, from the title alone (which I still don't think should have been that), was that it would shamelessly copy that in some areas but 'correct' it in others. Not only did it not do that, but when it does clearly borrow things from Moby Dick, it does actually feel like it was almost written as an admiring tribute.

[Hollowspine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel rich with detail that will draw readers in and immerse them into this Moby Dick retelling. This extremely well researched and written novel is for readers who enjoy exploring classical stories through different lenses. The novel would appeal to both those who enjoyed Moby Dick and readers who were less enthused by that thick tome. Some similarities include the outsider nature of the the narrator Ishmaelle, the precise details of the whaling ship, hierarchy and life aboard. Both are narratives about people who are seeking meaning to their lives, however, Ishmaelle also explores gender identity, race and our relationship with nature while maintaining the style and substance of the time period. Differences lie mainly in the representation and the construction of the narrative where we're allowed into the various thoughts of the characters, including a stream of thought from Captain Seneca, a Black man who is obsessed with hunting Moby Dick and pursued by a tragedy in his past.

[Markus]

Honestly don't know how to feel about this because it has some really cool ideas (a queer-ish narrative about hiding on a boat, I Ching readings, a bond with the whale, a freed black man as Ahab, attaching the story to the events in the world more firmly) but either follows through on them too little or too late and loses a lot of Moby Dick's strangeness (partially due to the lack of a frame narrative, partially due to keeping most of the more avant garde writing until the final confrontation)

[Marika HL · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read an ARC courtesy of NetGalley.

Xiaolu Guo reimagines Moby Dick, centring the experience of Ishmaelle, a young woman who disguises herself as a young man to become a whaler and escape her coastal British life. Guo makes some other changes to the classic tale, setting it 20 years later than the original.

Overall, this was an enjoyable read and Guo’s perspective is fresh and engaging.

[LX · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you so much to Chattobooks for the ARC! 🩵

4 ⭐

I honestly didn't expect myself to get so immersed into the story, I'll just say that straight away.

But the way Xiaolu Guo writes, the character of Ismaelle, and also some of the crew you read, and the prose within the story just kept me going and got me invested along on this journey.

The main theme within this would be about gender identity and finding one self. Ishmaelle has a lot of thoughts about the roles of women, the curse of women, how she feels when she is dressed as Ishmael vs how she feels when she's not him. Also how she feels like neither gender, giving us some thoughts on how she sometimes may feel non-binary.

The journey Ishmaelle goes on to find what she wants to do and what she thought would be the next step of her life really captures your attention and you can't help but want it to work out for her.

I got attatched to Ishmaelle and Kauri if I'm being honest, and Kauri is just the ONE due to a scene that happens. He is truth worthy, loyal, and a great character.

Fantastic read that truly does explore gender roles & identity, race, nature, the question about why should we survive and not them, amazing prose.

Please check TW


❗❗❗ TW Spoilers below ❗❗❗
I will state some heavy TW that I wanted to put as it came out of nowhere, I usually leave curious readers to check TW themselves as not everyone wants to know due to spoilers etc. but of course this has animals death, death of a child, and others, but also graphic SA. That happens a few times on page.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I began this book with no expectations, and it surpassed them. Being unfortunately well versed in feminist retellings of Moby-Dick I can say this one is not bad.

THE GOOD: Ishmaelle, for her unfortunate name, is a good protagonist. Rather than the typical “not like other girls” historical heroine she embraces a multigendered identity (that is not without the “womanhood is pain” shtick). Her worldview is unromantic in a way that is refreshing, and although arguably the turning point of the story is her impulsive love for Mackay, this is abandoned quickly— she does her best to maintain agency over the relationships she has with the men of the Nimrod. An English protagonist was, in my opinion, fascinating to read about in such a classically American setting, and I think the diverse world of whaling was seen more interestingly through the eyes of a foreigner. The novel’s structure was inspired by the original novel but did not copy it, and rather was an interesting new take.

THE BAD: somehow this novel suffers from being too short. Actually this novel suffers from being too explicitly a retelling of Moby Dick and in some ways would have done better as its own story. But as a retelling of Moby Dick it is too short. The aforementioned structure of the novel would have been more effective if it had more time to play out. And yet, Ishmaelle suffers so thoroughly over the course of this novel that any more chapters would have undoubtedly been agony. I kept wanting this story to do more— for Kauri’s character and relationship to Ishmaelle, for freedmen living in the first year of the American Civil War, for Ishmaelle to develop any of the skills she seems to enjoy and succeed at. It kept missing the mark. Also, to write a decidedly unromantic novel is a fresh choice for the seafaring genre and yet the protagonist here endures such trauma and horror it dulls the reader to it.

I hoped the ending would be different this time and it was not, which I think is a testament to Guo’s writing— I wanted the Nimrod and its flawed, gritty crew to survive. But the voyage was never going to end any other way. 3.5 stars.

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s hard to read this book without thinking of Moby Dick. That’s a pretty trivial thing to say, yet deep if you think about it. Or… nah, just obvious.

That’s my problem with the book, though. It’s kind of obvious, a rather sweet crowd pleaser where people say what they mean and justice is done, written in a series of brief and simple images; it aspires to a depth that the words don’t carry off. Too bad.

That said: there are some fun scenes, the premise and rebooted stuff is fresh and saucy, and there’s nothing so sacred about MD that it’s not worth taking on, literarily. Maybe it’ll be a great movie!

[Lawrence Bricher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved certain elements of this book, and others I felt could have been better from a structural point of view, even with the framework of Moby Dick to begin with. The character Mr Flaherty, for example gets his character arc (no spoilers) a bit earlier than I think optimal, and could have been exploited structurally better, same with Kauri and a few others. however, I really enjoyed it overall, and felt it offered a very refreshing take on a revered modern classic

[Elsa Ísberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

frábær

[PD Yang · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was so hard to put this book down. I was hesitant of this book because reimaginings are hard to pull off well without retelling the original story. This book was super rich in detail without over explaining details. Each word crafted was very well thought out!

[Rosa Daiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Call Me Ishmaelle (2025) is a reimagining of Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851). It tells the story of a young girl from the English coast, mostly between 1860 and 1862, who disguises herself as a man and joins the crew of a whaling ship. She develops a deep camaraderie with many of her shipmates as they find themselves bound by fate to their captain—an intensely and irrationally obsessed man, determined to slay the great white whale, Moby Dick.

I must say I enjoyed this novel immensely. I loved the story itself—Ishmaelle’s journey from the English countryside to the far corners of the world and back again, along with the grueling physical demands and complex social dynamics aboard the whaling ship. I also appreciated the international cast of characters. In general, I didn’t want to put the book down for an instant.

The reason I gave it four stars (rather than five) is that I would have enjoyed the novel even more if the characters—especially Captain Seneca and Ishmaelle—had been developed with greater psychological depth. Guo provides both with a backstory, but each is so distant and brutal that it serves more as a symbolic marker than a source of insight into their inner lives. That would have been fine, had they not been portrayed in the present so one-dimensionally: Seneca as purely mad, Ishmaelle as consistently kind, good, and empathetic. Where is Ishmaelle’s “bad streak”? Where is the trace of what once made Seneca a respected captain? Similar treatment could have enriched the other characters as well, though I understand that doing so might have made the novel much longer—perhaps over 800 pages. Still, I wouldn’t have minded that, as long as it was a good 800 pages.

My favorite aspect of the book is the way it felt in conversation with the original Moby-Dick. I’ll admit up front that I never made it beyond the first third of the classic. Specifically, I stopped at the scene where Ahab declares to Starbuck that the whale is not merely a creature but a symbol—that its visible form is a mask for the embodiment of evil in the world. That moment struck me as trying very hard to be deep and meaningful, but ultimately it felt like a superficial thought experiment—more literary performance than genuine insight into the human condition.

What resonated with me about Ishmaelle—and what drew me to read it in the first place—was Guo’s feminist critique of that moment and what it represents. In an interview, she pointed out that Ahab’s worldview reflects a very specific male kind of madness: the belief that something in the world that has hurt you is evil itself, and that conquering it—through violence, force, or domination—will somehow redeem or elevate you. That struck a chord with me. It’s a deeply male way of looking at the world, and I think it’s telling just how embedded in patriarchy we must be that generations of readers have taken that struggle seriously, as though it offers profound insight into the human experience. Frankly, you can find the same narrative arc in any B-rated superhero movie.

Ishmaelle, in contrast, becomes swept into the mission to destroy Moby Dick without being consumed by madness, hate, or revenge. She remains aware of how destructive and irrational those states are. In this way, Guo critiques what has too often been taken as the “greatness” of Moby-Dick, and offers a perspective that interrogates its legacy. And yet, Ishmaelle cannot escape her particular fate—and that tension, for me, is the most powerful and memorable thing about the book.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw the part of me that was in the madness of Captain Seneca, the madness that had possessed me since I left England. The madness of Seneca that was his hunting the whale to the ends of the world. Such madness led me to the floating life of a half-man half-woman, a dangerous mix of possibilities. There I had been, a man then a woman. What had my womanliness done in that blood-drenched ship of men? Had I led all to doom or was there some salvation in their deaths?

 
A re-write of Moby Dick - I was drawn to this book by it appearing in Booker Prize Prediction lists from some of the most respected names on Booktube/Bookstagam (and even Radio 4).
 
And there is a lot to be said for the book’s chances (or at least for the fact that its very likely to have ben under consideration by the judges) – perhaps more than the tippers realised – as one judge in particular, Chris Power, not just proclaimed Moby Dick “one of the greatest – if not the greatest – novels ever written” (in a review incidentally of a non-fiction review of its writing named after the book’s famous first line “Call Me Ishmael” by Charles Olson) but was a judge on the Goldsmith Prize in 2020 when Xiaolu Guo’s “A Lover’s Discourse” was shortlisted with Power himself – who called it an essayistic novel – providing the judges’ commendation.
 
Guo’s novel opens some 10 years later than Melville’s novel was published (and some 20 years after the first hand experience on which it was based) – a deliberate decision to include the early stages of the America Civil War as background to include the American racial tension missing from the original. 
 
It also opens instead of America on the South Coast of England – not Hastings where Guo spent a year writing (and penned a memoir) but the Kent Coast – a decision I was less clear on other than to give her space to write her main character – a teenage girl orphaned early on in the novel and deciding to head to sea and America, in hopeful pursuit of a father-replacement figure – an New York sea captain who had showed her some kindness (although on board the ship where she has taken a job she hears talk of the whaling ships).
 

All this talk made me wonder if I would one day become a whaleman. But I told myself, whether I was Ishmaelle or Ishmael, the fates had given me this sea life, and what lay ahead, be it a whale or a man or a grand house on the southern tip of Manhattan Island, only the fates would know. They would guide me in some unaccountable way –  and I endeavoured never to question them. All I needed to do was see what lay in front of me once my soles touched the soil of America.

 
As an aside I think a lot of my issues with the novel arose very early on – even from the titular first three words.  In Melville’s original many readers I think would assume that “Call me Ishmael” means precisely that that character’s name was originally something else, the names instead a signifier of his outcast/banishment/wanderer (but also protected) status.  Here though the protagonist is called Ishmaelle after her father had assumed the unborn baby was a boy – introducing of course Guo’s other main twist, a female whaler.  But the father picked the name Ishmael “after the son of Abraham from the old bible” – which seems a pretty odd choice to me – at least without some comment - for a bible fearing Christian father and signalled to me, accurately, that the old Testament imagery which underpins the original was deliberately – but for me very regrettably – lost here.
 
And that loss of linguistic antecedents also extends to the Shakespearian influences of the original – the language here (written of course in the author’s second language) much much simpler – again for me regrettably so that when the two stories do overlap there are times with almost identical scenes when I felt like I was reading a Readers Digest Condensed or even “Shakespeare-made-easy” version of the novel.
 
When Ishmaelle reaches New York – her dreams are dashed and she indeed finds herself drawn to whaling and heading for Nantucket, and for the first real time the two texts (as an aside there are free Kindle versions of Moby Dick available and I would recommend having one open when reading this novel) strongly coincide (sometimes I felt to an artificial sense) as we read Mr O’Malley had told me, when we were still on the Atlantic, that New Bedford had monopolised the business of whaling, but that Nantucket was the great original whaling town which is a slightly rewritten version (sans classical reference) of the original “Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original— the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the first dead American whale was stranded”
 
And from there much of the story – at least until the ship is at sea – is a close copy of the original (Ishmael for example spending the night sharing a room with a Pacific Ocean harpooner/harpoonist – Kauri but rather than Queeueg) with only names changed but not just general narrative but at times side-details exactly reproduced.
 
And this is where I think this rewrite of a classic American novel falls someway short of another more famous recent one – Percival Everett’s James, as whereas from the very first scene of that novel the original narrative is undermined and turned around (with James’s code switching vocabulary and behaviour) here this almost feels like just a translation (into simpler English) and distillation of the original.
 
Instead the names and backgrounds of the characters are changed – not just Ishmaelle but for example with Captain Seneca of the Nimrod replacing the Captain Ahab of the Pequod, but with more importantly Seneca being a freed black ex-slave.
 
The Seneca character works well I think – a back story involving his wife dying in childbirth after giving birth to another man’s white child gives a further motivation as well as a nice link to the white whale.
 
Ishmaelle being female works I think less well – early on it seems to largely consist of little more than her having to avoid changing/washing/going to the toilet in public and dealing with her monthly periods; an assault does occur (as I believe typically happened with sailors discovered to be female) the assaulter assumed he was raping a man.  And later I felt that Guo could not quite decide if she was writing a novel with musings/reflections on female/maternal versus male characteristics or on gender fluidity and perhaps as a result did not really gave a satisfactory treatment to either.
 
And another very change – to bring in Tao beliefs and in particular I-Ching Hexagrams – taking over – while I think well intentioned and also sensibly building out the original (from the slightly odd Fedallah character in Moby Dick) – was not really to my tastes at all, particularly when compared to the loss of Biblical imagery; but of course this very de-Westernisation of a canonical Western text was precisely what the author aimed for and I think in this case she did achieve what she set out to do.
 
And these Hexagrams for me rather ruined what was otherwise a well written finale.
 
I have to say while a book I enjoyed reading, I also found it slightly underwhelming and I am not sure how the Booker judges will react (Power for example I believe particularly loving the very expansiveness and depth and over the top prose of both Melville’s text and Olson’s which it seems to me is precisely what is lost in Guo’s re-fictionalisation.
 
My thanks to Grove Atlantic for an ARC via NetGalley

[Gigi White · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lyrical and captivating retelling of Moby Dick set in the 1860’s.
I found this narrative to be compulsively readable.
Orphaned by her parents and abandoned by her brother, young Ishmaelle, a teenager from Kent, disguises herself as a male and sets off to sea.
She seeks livelihood, adventure and company. She eventually embarks on the Nimrod, a whaling ship.
The book tackles complex themes of gender and race discrimination. It also displays underlying environmental and ecological themes by focusing on the cruelty of whaling. The narrative , reads like a lofty poem or an opium induced fever dream.
Ishmaelle is a formidable female lead with a clear mind and a fair and open view of all humans and creatures.
Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for entrusting me with an advanced copy of this compelling novel.

[Jensen McCorkel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was well written. Character development is it’s strong point. You become invested in their welfare from the start and as the story progresses that invest becomes stronger. This story has themes of race, gender roles, identity, religion and East meets West. If you enjoyed Moby Dick or even if you didn’t this retelling is so well written you will become a fan. I think the most interesting addition to this retelling was the addition Muzi the Taoist and his calming presence. He added a good balance to the story just as his character did for Ishmaelle.

[Roxana Rathbun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclaimer, I have not actually read Herman Melville's Moby Dick. However, I know the story and I appreciated this novel all the same. I loved the gender bending aspect and the outcome of the story. This reminded me of a book I once read called "Pope Joan" which did a similar thing. Ishmaelle is a character I found easy to love and I rooted for her in all her endeavors. I also especially liked the sound effects the author included in the story.

Thanks to Netgalley for an EARC of this book!

[Jim Ritchie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeking

I'll start this review with a confession. Despite trying several times I have never managed to read Moby Dick. There are bound to be references in this story which I, as a non-reader of the classic, didn't understand. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the story of Ishmaelle and the search for the great white whale. There are unexpected twists and turns in the book which help to propel the narrative forward. A compulsive read.

[Jakub Sláma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Right. This is a tough one. Like, the book is okay. There's even this propulsivity to the prose that I increasingly think many writers struggle to pull off. I liked it, kind of, even though sometimes I was quite bored reading this. But: I find it exceptionally difficult to understand what the author was even trying to achieve by writing this book, which seemed absolutely pointless honestly. When I remember seing a random YouTuber (booktuber? is that a thing? I guess) suggesting this book might even be longlisted for the Booker Prize, because this is the kind of stuff the judges tend to love, I just can't help but lol, because, well, just no. Whenever the book touches upon anything of substance (the big topics™ such as "being a woman," "being a man," or "racism"), everything is extremely shallow, surface-level, brief, and repetitive.

Sure, the idea seems great, let's rewrite Moby-Dick or, The Whale as if Ishmael were a woman; enter Ishmaelle. But the execution of this idea is somewhat lackluster, and for most of the novel, the protagonist pretends to be a man, so the only benefits of a female perspective are a couple of paragraphs about periods, a couple of paragraphs about how men as well as the man are wicked creatures and how whale-hunting is bad, and that's about it? Additionally, the occasional switch in perspective (there are a few stream-of-consciousness-style passages from the perspective of captain Ahab, oh sorry, captain Seneca, who is black now by the way, chasing after an evil white whale, see?) seems absolutely pointless and does not seem to contribute anything whatsoever to the narrative. Also, I'm sure passages such as the following –

Ishmaelle: Now I know my fate it all comes to this cast as a witch like my aunt of old into the cold absurdity of the ocean the waves about me a lone oyster with a mind screaming out of the abyss the end the end the end
Seneca: Calm your soul the witch is on the sea and she will go down and eat out the mind of the devil and deliver it to my mighty arms but I rage and feel the torrent and my heart beats stronger than a horse and the unknown is closing in the dark already and darker still the fate the dark the dark the dark and darker still beats the drum it comes it comes
Whale: Wwwoooooohhhhhh kkkkkkkkkkkkkkk wwwwwwooooooo ssssssssssssshhh

– seemed like an amazing idea at some point but on the page, for me, they straddled the very thin line between mildly interesting and downright cringe. I was very happy to see author referring to How to Speak Whale: A Voyage into the Future of Animal Communication, which I loved, but, well, this is not what I'd imagined to be her takeaway from the book.

[Siobhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Call Me Ishmaelle, Xiaolu Guo's postcolonial take on Herman Melville's Moby Dick, turns Ishmael into a cross-dressing heroine who flees tragedy by taking to the high seas. Readers of Moby Dick will be familiar with many of the places Ishmaelle (her father wanted a boy) lands and with the international cast of characters—names and backgrounds have been changed—she meets on board the Nimrod. The ship is helmed by the maniacal sea captain, Seneca, a black-indigenous man chasing the white whale who devoured his leg, and sanity, on a previous journey. Guo’s spin on Captain Ahab is a provocative one.

Guo's novel is a fantastical, witchy-feminist (a popular genre these days) take on a classic, and in many ways it works. Although the names have been changed, the crew are more than expendable bodies charged with lighting the homes of the wealthy at home—they've joined the crew for freedom, adventure, survival, and escape, and their stories are fascinating and diverse. Like Ishmaelle, they are seeking refuge from an increasingly unstable world where precarity and extraction have made everyday life untenable. America's on the brink of the Civil War, islands around the world are being threatened by pirates, and colonial powers are hellbent on extracting natural resources, and human beings, without care. The seas, while treacherous, offer the only freedom many of the Nimrod’s crew have ever known.

In addition to the teenage, cross-dressing Ishmael/Ishmaelle, Guo’s novel shares Melville’s fascination with history, geography, the nuances—and violence--of whaling, and life on the seas. Told in the first person, we viscerally experience rape, starvation, the boredom and precarity of a sailor’s life, and the darkness at the heart of the whaling industry. At a time when mankind is facing an increasingly unstable climate, rising fascism, and a future marred by sins of the past, Call Me Ishmaelle is a timely contribution to the literary canon.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review an ARC of Call Me Ishmaelle. And many thanks to Xiaolu Guo for writing a novel that found me rereading, and rethinking, Moby Dick (and planning a trip to Nantucket next year).

[Lindsay Andros · Rating 3 out of 5]

After her family dies and her brother leaves to become a sailor, Ishmaelle decides that the sea is calling her as well. Disguising herself as a boy, she leaves the only home she’s ever known to sail to America, where she finds work on a boat. Her captain, obsessed with finding and killing the whale who maimed him, slowly slips into madness as the sailors around him are at his mercy. A feminist retelling of a beloved classic, this novel reimagines some of history’s great characters and themes in a modern light.

To be honest, I haven’t read MOBY-DICK (bad English teacher, I know), so I’m sure I missed some of the parallels. However, from what I can tell, a lot of this is a simplistic retelling of the original text. Sure, the diction is more modern and easier to read, but most of this feels directly lifted from what I know of the original, rather than offering truly unique insight to the text as other modern retellings have done. A good retelling needs to somehow transform the original, adding some sort of new meaning to it. As far as I can tell, there isn’t much here that warrants a female retelling, or that adds much depth. The characters and plot are largely the same, without anything that makes them fresh. It seems more gimmicky than anything.

Despite this, I did enjoy reading it. I loved the fast-paced adventure of it, and found some worthwhile moments, particularly in the descriptions of the narrator’s assault and in her connection with the whale. Guo’s style is propulsive and at times lovely; her prose is a true joy to read.

Overall, a retelling that isn’t really a retelling, but is still somewhat enjoyable. Three stars.

[Jip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have not read Moby Dick, only a summary of the plot after reading this retelling. Call me Ishmaelle seems like it is more interesting in the context of modern times, although the high level plot progression is very similar.

The premise of a female Ishmael was very intriguing, as was her perspective as part of the whaling ship crew. I enjoyed her musings on the disadvantages of being a female and lack of freedom during that time period, how gender is treated in nature, and how she herself wished to be identified in terms of gender.

And while the blurb seems to imply this is a queer retelling (and the word queer is used almost excessively), this is more about the feminine viewpoint. But I felt like more could have been done with the idea. There is also snippets of race and discrimination, but they are almost like afterthoughts.

What I wish was covered more was the "mysterious bond" between Ishmaelle and the whale. It's hinted at, but unclear to me what that bond is. Maybe just highlighting how women are less violent and not always seeking to kill anything? Which I find to be an overdone idea in books to a certain extent.

I could have also done with less of of the I-Ching and the hexagrams, which I guess were replacing the prophesies from Fedellah in the original. But they were confusing and I didn't even try to understand whatever symbolism they were meant to represent.

Anyway, worth a read whether you have read/enjoyed Moby Dick in the past or not.

Thanks to Grove Press, Black​ Cat and NetGalley for providing an eARC for review.

[M.L. Bennett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a poignant novel following the life of Ishmaelle as she disguised herself as a man to move through the sea-faring world. It was well-researched in regard to whaling—the sailing, hunting, and harvesting process. I found that very intriguing.
I don’t usually advocate for “trigger warnings” but this novel did contain numerous graphic scenes of sexual assault that seemed to come out of nowhere. Some readers may find this distressing. I suppose the point was to further emphasize Ishmaelle being a woman no matter what clothes she wore, but it seemed unnecessary to stress her physical gender as each chapter typically ended on that note anyway.
However, overall, this was an interesting take on Moby Dick, rife with questions of gender, race, and even species (there are some scenes from the perspective of a whale). 3.5 stars.

[MummyBear · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very intrigued by the plot of this book. It sounded like it would be something that I would really enjoy. I did enjoy parts of it. Ishmaelle was interesting, adventurous and determined, I loved her spirit. I flew through the first half of the book, it was gripping and I liked where it was going. The second half of the book, dragged on and I struggled with it. The final battles, the pace picked up again and I was able to finish it.

Overall a good story, but it could have been 70-80 pages less and it would have kept the pace up, and my interest a little more sustained.

[Meghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Call Me Ishmaelle is a poetic, symbolic retelling of Moby-Dick from a female perspective. I haven’t read the original classic, so I can’t speak to how closely this parallels Melville’s work—but it’s clear the author was aiming for something deeply reflective.

I was really intrigued by the concept—a gender-swapped narrator and a quieter, more introspective approach to such a well-known story. The writing itself had a poetic rhythm at times, and I could appreciate the philosophical lens through which life at sea was portrayed.

That said, parts of this didn’t fully land for me. Characters were introduced late and sometimes felt like they were just… there, without really adding anything meaningful. The fragmented sentence style—while likely meant to reflect internal thought or emotional disconnection—pulled me out of the story more than it drew me in. And the pacing early on was slow. Ishmaelle’s backstory took a while to get through, and I think it could have been tightened without losing impact.

While the novel clearly pays tribute to Moby-Dick with its sea-bound reflections and layered symbolism, many of the more poetic interludes felt disconnected from the main story. I kept waiting for things to build toward something intense or moving, but the emotional payoff felt flat.

Still, this might resonate more with readers who enjoy experimental prose and reflective storytelling. It wasn’t quite for me—but I do think it tried to do something unique.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.