What do you think?
Rate this book
The Pirate's Daughter: A Novel
It began with a chance meeting and led to a date at a small French restaurant in a city by the sea. She ordered expensive wine. He paid the bill. She spoke of the sea. He was haunted by her green eyes and copper-colored skin. Then, in a matter of weeks, the woman named Cricket Page would lead Wilson Lander away from the moorings of his familiar life, away from his relationship with a successful businesswoman and onto a tycoon's yacht called the Compound Interest--for a journey across the great Sargasso Sea.
Coming ashore in a world of searing mystery and danger, Lander will pay the price for his unquenchable desire for Cricket Page, for their moments of stolen pleasure and her cryptic promises of a life of luxury together. For she is a pirate's daughter, and in an exotic land exploding with cruelty and violence, populated by maniacs and plunderers, Wilson Lander must escape the woman who has stolen his heart--and given him his freedom. . . .
Coming ashore in a world of searing mystery and danger, Lander will pay the price for his unquenchable desire for Cricket Page, for their moments of stolen pleasure and her cryptic promises of a life of luxury together. For she is a pirate's daughter, and in an exotic land exploding with cruelty and violence, populated by maniacs and plunderers, Wilson Lander must escape the woman who has stolen his heart--and given him his freedom. . . .
336 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1996
7 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Robert Girardi
16 books36 followersRobert Girardi is the author of four previous novels and one volume of novellas, all of which have been widely translated. He has written for film and television. His nonfiction pieces and reviews have been published in The Washington Post, Washingtonian, The New Republic, The National Review and Landscape Architecture Magazine, among other publications. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and USC Film School, Girardi has received a James Michener Fellowship. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his three children.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
September 5, 2017
Yes it really was that bad. I kept reading sort of hopefully thinking it was going to go somewhere but it really didn't.
The title is misleading because it is not really about the "pirate's daughter" it is about a white man who is disillusioned with the success of his girlfriend and the boredom of his life. The pirate's daughter turns up as a series of female stereotypes that seem to be based in toxic male fantasies. First she is a manic pixie girl, then it turns out she is really in a gang of evil pirates (her closeness to her father is pretty implausible given her story) then the plot vacillates between painting her as a damsel in distress that needs saving (albeit a particularly hopeless, passive and dumb one) and an evil temptress who first began seducing men at the age of ten (I wish I was exaggerating). Wilson is not sure who to believe (since of course the slaver who won her in a bet and "owns" her until Wilson in turn wins her is a really reliable source of course) and while he makes up his mind manages to have sex with her a lot.
Meanwhile he objectifies or ignores all non-white characters, unless they are masculine enough to be exoticised side-kicks.
He marries Cricket for convenience (and for more excuses to describe her appearance in detail and have them have sex) and keeps pushing her away emotionally. When they both witness hideous sexual violence and it makes her not want to have sex he treats this as an irritating tantrum rather than showing any degree of understanding or sympathy. Then he feels betrayed by her when she does not act as though their marriage means something at a time when she has least reason to (and he has pretty much given her nothing).
I won't say exactly how it ends but the racism and colonialism of the text gets worse and worse and let me put it this way there is a term "sowing your wild oats" that is relevant to this book.
Basically a journey into the sanctimonious whining of the self defined "nice guys" who measure themselves by the worst excesses of the most toxic masculinity imaginable.
The title is misleading because it is not really about the "pirate's daughter" it is about a white man who is disillusioned with the success of his girlfriend and the boredom of his life. The pirate's daughter turns up as a series of female stereotypes that seem to be based in toxic male fantasies. First she is a manic pixie girl, then it turns out she is really in a gang of evil pirates (her closeness to her father is pretty implausible given her story) then the plot vacillates between painting her as a damsel in distress that needs saving (albeit a particularly hopeless, passive and dumb one) and an evil temptress who first began seducing men at the age of ten (I wish I was exaggerating). Wilson is not sure who to believe (since of course the slaver who won her in a bet and "owns" her until Wilson in turn wins her is a really reliable source of course) and while he makes up his mind manages to have sex with her a lot.
Meanwhile he objectifies or ignores all non-white characters, unless they are masculine enough to be exoticised side-kicks.
He marries Cricket for convenience (and for more excuses to describe her appearance in detail and have them have sex) and keeps pushing her away emotionally. When they both witness hideous sexual violence and it makes her not want to have sex he treats this as an irritating tantrum rather than showing any degree of understanding or sympathy. Then he feels betrayed by her when she does not act as though their marriage means something at a time when she has least reason to (and he has pretty much given her nothing).
I won't say exactly how it ends but the racism and colonialism of the text gets worse and worse and let me put it this way there is a term "sowing your wild oats" that is relevant to this book.
Basically a journey into the sanctimonious whining of the self defined "nice guys" who measure themselves by the worst excesses of the most toxic masculinity imaginable.
December 13, 2011
I ran into the library in a huge hurry. Sydney was running up and down the ailses and I had to pick up Sam in 10 minutes. I literally grabbed this book off the shelf, looked at the cover, and thought "the cover looks cool, I'll take it." Nothing like "judging a book by it's cover" and it was actually a good read. Who would of thought!!
Read
May 11, 2016actually i read like 70 pages and had to stop. usually i stick out books until the end in case it gets better but nothing but fire can make this book any different from what it is: an obvious sad white male self-insert character who is secretly very lucky and needs a magical pirate girl who can read tarot cards to show up in his life and take him for hot sex in the caribbean
April 11, 2020
Though the official description makes this book sound like a romance, The Pirate's Daughter is an adventurous rendering of a man plagued by fear as he immerses himself into page-turning drama on an impossible journey. I often thought of The Lighted Lamp by Henderson as I read it and loved the descriptions of the flawed and dangerous people that our hero, Wilson Lander, befriends and endures. Readers will love Girardi's captivating mosaic of pirating, yachting, and gambling as Wilson must contend with malaria, betrayal, dangerous African tribes, and at the center of it all, a beautiful woman with scarred and ugly hands. You will not regret joining Wilson as he follows his destiny aboard the billionaire's yacht, The Compound Interest, for a journey across the globe that ultimately shows him the way home was always his to claim.
November 13, 2022
Yeah so this reaaaally wasn't for me. The only reason I finished it was because I was already half way through when I realised I didn't want to read this anymore, and I'm really bad at not finishing books.
This book was just utterly miserable. I was not expecting such a gruesome, horrible story, nor the unexpected references to rape, as well as the incredibly graphic depictions of slavery and racism. It was a very, very difficult book with little reward for me; even the ending where Wilson chose to come back to Andrea, while sort of sweet, was tarnished by the uncertainty of the letter from Cricket and Wilson's surprise son, as well as the annoying cliché where the main character writes the book that you're reading.
I just did not like this book at all. I can sort of see how someone could like it, so I'm not saying no one should read it, I just wouldn't recommend it to almost anyone.
This book was just utterly miserable. I was not expecting such a gruesome, horrible story, nor the unexpected references to rape, as well as the incredibly graphic depictions of slavery and racism. It was a very, very difficult book with little reward for me; even the ending where Wilson chose to come back to Andrea, while sort of sweet, was tarnished by the uncertainty of the letter from Cricket and Wilson's surprise son, as well as the annoying cliché where the main character writes the book that you're reading.
I just did not like this book at all. I can sort of see how someone could like it, so I'm not saying no one should read it, I just wouldn't recommend it to almost anyone.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 18, 2025
An adventure, about a man in a rut who is implausibly coerced into going to sea with a girl who turns out to be the daughter of the title. He then gets mixed up with modern day pirates and slave traders. This could have been a good yarn -- it is interesting, if at times rather nasty -- but the writing is not good and the research apparently cursory. At one point, a pirate is said to have been caught by the Argentine coast gaurd off the Maldives -- one would have thought they'd be more concerned at being on the wrong side of the globe than chasing pirates! Verdict? There are too many good books to waste time reading this.
June 19, 2022
An easy romp on the high seas and into the darkness of Africa. I was reminded of two very old classics, Kidnapped and Treasure Island, merged and updated for modern times. The second half of the story touches on the sadly still relevant topics of slavery and civil, tribal unrest in Africa (west Africa here). I did always have the sense that "it would turn out alright" which sort of negated the action / suspense somewhat. But still an enjoyable read.
December 30, 2024
Honestly so much to love about it, and I do love Robert Girardi’s writing. He’s funny, he’s atmospheric, he’s a pioneer for the truth. I only wish the characters in this one were just as singular and vivid as they are in Madeline’s Ghost. I found in some places different characters’ voices resembled each other too much. Though, I happen to be a huge fan of that snarky Girardi voice, so I’m not really complaining.
July 16, 2022
This book was just not my interest. I finished it because I wanted to know the end & I almost NEVER leave a book undone. Pirates, magic, unforgivable sale/rape/treatment of human beings & many secrets kept the story going but the description islands & the sea were beyond me. Glad that I finished it & got to the ending but not for me......
February 5, 2022
A crazy story; bloody and depraved for certain but also a really great adventure. Girardi is a master of atmospheric tales of lost souls searching. Vaporetto 13 and Madeleines Ghost are even more fabulous reads.
December 2, 2014
I picked this up a year ago while browsing, intrigued by the cover and the title. It looked interesting, but I was reminded of my towering shelf of books to be read and so did not buy it then. The professor for my creative writing workshop class was going to be out of town for a class period, and announced that he was having a guest instructor for that class, who turned out to be Robert Girardi. The to-be-read shelf be damned, I like to know whose instruction I'm getting, so I went out and found this and his first novel, Madeleine's Ghost.
The story here is fairly straight-forward: Wilson Lander is a young man with a sense of dread, unable to complete his doctorate in archaelogy, and is working in the big city as a clerk to his girlfriend. He stumbles upon Cricket Page, who leads him into an exotic adventure as a galley cook on a tychoon's yacht called the Compound Interest. But Cricket is more than she seems (the title gives it away), and Wilson promises to be more than the nebbish than he initially seems.
I'm a pirate fan. There's something about the outlaw on the sea that intrigues me more than an outlaw on the land. Two of my favorites in this area are Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides and A.A. Attanasio's Wyvern. Long-time readers will remember a fairly lengthy discussion in 1992 or 1993 about Michael Scott Rohan's pirate book, Chase the Morning. So I was predisposed to liking this book, even though this describes a modern day piracy.
And I did like this book a lot--up until a certain point, the break between sections five and six, where Girardi lost my sense of disbelief in what the characters actually do. The motivations of the characters in other sections are a little hard to believe, but from a steady diet of a slightly more fantastical nature leads me to extend a bit more leeway to an author. The manner in which the story is told is very movie-like, and it was no surprise to me to discover that Girardi is also a screenwriter.
After our class meeting, I talked with Girardi about his book. During class he had made a disparaging comment regarding "genre," which seemed to me out of place, considering the fact that this book is basically an adventure story set in the modern era and his first novel is a ghost tale. His definition of genre (learned from his time at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, I think) was books that are essentially adventure and nothing more. Of course, as a "fan" of science fiction, I have always used genre as the word to describe the marketing labels placed on the various "types" of fiction: mainstream, SF, mystery. Later in the semester, I discovered that there is a third usage of genre: describing the "forms" of written communication, i.e., poetry, fiction, essay, biography, advertising, etc. From all this I have deduced that genre is a highly overused word and I have made myself a resolution to discontinue its use, in an attempt to promote more understanding between the three camps that have adopted it into their discourse.
The story here is fairly straight-forward: Wilson Lander is a young man with a sense of dread, unable to complete his doctorate in archaelogy, and is working in the big city as a clerk to his girlfriend. He stumbles upon Cricket Page, who leads him into an exotic adventure as a galley cook on a tychoon's yacht called the Compound Interest. But Cricket is more than she seems (the title gives it away), and Wilson promises to be more than the nebbish than he initially seems.
I'm a pirate fan. There's something about the outlaw on the sea that intrigues me more than an outlaw on the land. Two of my favorites in this area are Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides and A.A. Attanasio's Wyvern. Long-time readers will remember a fairly lengthy discussion in 1992 or 1993 about Michael Scott Rohan's pirate book, Chase the Morning. So I was predisposed to liking this book, even though this describes a modern day piracy.
And I did like this book a lot--up until a certain point, the break between sections five and six, where Girardi lost my sense of disbelief in what the characters actually do. The motivations of the characters in other sections are a little hard to believe, but from a steady diet of a slightly more fantastical nature leads me to extend a bit more leeway to an author. The manner in which the story is told is very movie-like, and it was no surprise to me to discover that Girardi is also a screenwriter.
After our class meeting, I talked with Girardi about his book. During class he had made a disparaging comment regarding "genre," which seemed to me out of place, considering the fact that this book is basically an adventure story set in the modern era and his first novel is a ghost tale. His definition of genre (learned from his time at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, I think) was books that are essentially adventure and nothing more. Of course, as a "fan" of science fiction, I have always used genre as the word to describe the marketing labels placed on the various "types" of fiction: mainstream, SF, mystery. Later in the semester, I discovered that there is a third usage of genre: describing the "forms" of written communication, i.e., poetry, fiction, essay, biography, advertising, etc. From all this I have deduced that genre is a highly overused word and I have made myself a resolution to discontinue its use, in an attempt to promote more understanding between the three camps that have adopted it into their discourse.
November 27, 2012
The Pirate's Daughter by Robert Girardi is a modern day pirate story — but not with Somali pirates, but pirates fashioning their lives on the piracy of the early days of the Caribbean. It's also about a bean counter at a crossroads in his life. In comes the mysterious Cricket Page who sweeps him off his feet.
Cricket Page offers Wilson Lander the chance to change his life. She convinces him to join her as a crewman on the Compound Interest, a high tech yacht. Of course the ship is a bounty all its own. And so, Wilson finds himself among pirates.
The book has its ups and downs — starting out slow to highlight the monotony of Wilsons, life I suppose. But it also makes for monotonous reading. The meeting with Cricket and their sailing trip is quirky and reminded me a bit of the relationship between Griffin and Sabine. Then, though, there's the pirate lair. On its introduction, its fantastical, hard to believe and something worth exploring. Unfortunately the book hits another lull.
So my one complaint with The Pirate's Daughter is it's pacing. There's not enough of an ebb and flow to the narrative. It's more of a couple traffic jams with completely empty freeways in between.
Cricket Page offers Wilson Lander the chance to change his life. She convinces him to join her as a crewman on the Compound Interest, a high tech yacht. Of course the ship is a bounty all its own. And so, Wilson finds himself among pirates.
The book has its ups and downs — starting out slow to highlight the monotony of Wilsons, life I suppose. But it also makes for monotonous reading. The meeting with Cricket and their sailing trip is quirky and reminded me a bit of the relationship between Griffin and Sabine. Then, though, there's the pirate lair. On its introduction, its fantastical, hard to believe and something worth exploring. Unfortunately the book hits another lull.
So my one complaint with The Pirate's Daughter is it's pacing. There's not enough of an ebb and flow to the narrative. It's more of a couple traffic jams with completely empty freeways in between.
January 31, 2010
Wilson Lander, a wimp who is the executive assistant to his stockbroker girlfriend Andrea, meets Susan "Cricket" Page, a sexy woman working in an occult store only until she ships out to sea as a crew member on a private yacht.
Lander does what is unthinkable for him; he leaves with the mysterious Cricket to sail the open seas on a luxury yacht. He falls in with pirates, of course, and you might have to stretch your credibility a bit, but it's worth it.
After a wild journey of over two years, Lander comes back to the United States without Cricket to settle down. But, Cricket has a surprise one last surprise for our boy Wilson.
The story is almost a fantasy, but Girardi can really write and most of the time everything fits.
Lander does what is unthinkable for him; he leaves with the mysterious Cricket to sail the open seas on a luxury yacht. He falls in with pirates, of course, and you might have to stretch your credibility a bit, but it's worth it.
After a wild journey of over two years, Lander comes back to the United States without Cricket to settle down. But, Cricket has a surprise one last surprise for our boy Wilson.
The story is almost a fantasy, but Girardi can really write and most of the time everything fits.
February 8, 2009
An adventure, about a man in a rut who is implausibly coerced into going to sea with a girl who turns out to be the daughter of the title. He then gets mixed up with modern day pirates and slave traders. This could have been a good yarn -- it is interesting, if at times rather nasty -- but the writing is not good and the research apparently cursory. At one point, a pirate is said to have been caught by the Argentine coast gaurd off the Maldives -- one would have thought they'd be more concerned at being on the wrong side of the globe than chasing pirates! Verdict? There are too many good books to waste time reading this.
January 10, 2009
OK, so when you read the short description, it sounds a bit silly and doesn't give you much informaiton. The book starts out in a very "normal" world and then takes you on a wild adventure. It seems unbeliveable in the beginning, but you are quickly sucked in and start believing. I really liked that it is set in current times and made me believe anyway. I didn't want the book to end. Robert Girardi is one of my favorite contemporary authors. His books always have great character development and are always fun.
June 14, 2007
This book is meant to entertain, and does so successfully. There is nothing challenging about the vocabulary or language of the book. However, the message is also worth taking the time, one man can make a difference. A simple message, for a simple book, but a good one none-the-less. It is also nice that this particular man happens to be a 26 year old single loser who has never had a successful job. That means there is hope for me to change the world!
January 17, 2009
Wilson Lauder meets Cricket Page in a small French Restaurant. She leads him on an adventurous journey on a yacht across to Africa where he discovers she is a pirate and so his her father. Great adventure. Lacking real emotion.
Robert Girardi wrote one of my favorite books ever..Madeleine's Ghost. But this one is a stretch.
Not to be confused with another book of the same title that's about a real-life swashbuckler, Errol Flynn.
Robert Girardi wrote one of my favorite books ever..Madeleine's Ghost. But this one is a stretch.
Not to be confused with another book of the same title that's about a real-life swashbuckler, Errol Flynn.
August 17, 2013
What is the worth of nobility and heroism in the modern world? What is the value of a life? How far would your own code of honor take you? Each time I read it, I find myself reflecting.
One of my favorite sentences ever written is in this book. It's magic.
One of my favorite sentences ever written is in this book. It's magic.
September 13, 2013
Picked this book up in the vestibule of my old apartment building for free because of the title. It's a weird and wonderful story that makes you feel as if you are there, most of the time. You have to be able to withstand some leaps of reality but its we worth it.
November 25, 2007
American contemp:Present day ocean and Africa-----------Modern Pirates, empty story
June 2, 2008
Too goofy and graphic for me.
February 29, 2008
I absolutely adore this succulent tale! Not much intellectualism here, but well-developed characters with lots of swirling action! A highly-entertaining read!
May 21, 2008
I enjoyed this one. It was a fun adventure filled story.
March 20, 2008
This was a very enjoyable book. I enjoyed the way the author combined the grittiness of living like a pirate with the realism it entails. All around a good read!
April 13, 2008
I usually don't read books like this, but what a great book. Very suspenseful and all around swash-buckling good time. A bit graphic at times, but its part of the story.
November 19, 2010
Jump over the broom
July 24, 2011
Entertaining read!
December 23, 2011
Another novel that left me emotionally exhausted after I finished it. Girardi at his best.
February 17, 2013
I enjoyed every minute, I did not want it to end. 2 thumbs up.
March 26, 2013
For a book I picked up randomly because it had the same name of another book I was wanting to read, I didn't expect much. But it was engaging and keep me entertained throughout.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews