Yesterday afternoon my family were either at rock festivals or in bed sleeping off colds or hangovers and so I repaired to the sofa, covered my knees with a blanket to ward off the sudden chill and read the second half of Philip Hoare's "Leviathan". I'm not really a nature boy so the fact that I was so captivated by a book about whales should be worth some of the usual asterisk-studded superlatives. One of the things that makes the "creative non-fiction" category so seductive for writers is the way it allows them to stretch out in many different dimensions - history, literature, philosophy, science and others - simultaneously but I don't know any who've managed to do it in such a triumphantly non-boring way as Hoare. I can't recommend it too highly.
Monday, September 14, 2009
In praise of Philip Hoare's "Leviathan"
Yesterday afternoon my family were either at rock festivals or in bed sleeping off colds or hangovers and so I repaired to the sofa, covered my knees with a blanket to ward off the sudden chill and read the second half of Philip Hoare's "Leviathan". I'm not really a nature boy so the fact that I was so captivated by a book about whales should be worth some of the usual asterisk-studded superlatives. One of the things that makes the "creative non-fiction" category so seductive for writers is the way it allows them to stretch out in many different dimensions - history, literature, philosophy, science and others - simultaneously but I don't know any who've managed to do it in such a triumphantly non-boring way as Hoare. I can't recommend it too highly.
Spot on. I read this about a month ago and haven't been so captivated by a book for a long time. In fact straight after I finished it I read Moby-Dick to fill the whale shaped void in my life.
ReplyDeleteIt's on my birthday list - I'm hoping to be starting it next Monday
ReplyDeleteIt's an amazing book.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great wee book. It took me a while to get into his personal style, but he does have a way of drawing the reader into the work with some very clever literary devices - like framing the story around Moby Dick and the whaling industry while also telling us a huge amount about the animals themselves. 'Captivating' indeed.
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