Whalefall

For a book that markets itself as being scientific and based in realism, I couldn't help myself from laughing at the ridiculousness throughout. Also, the weird shifting from first person to third person and narration is very off-putting, amplified by the author's obsession with reiteration and repeating phrases for emphasis—seriously, even Drake & Josh wouldn't put so much emphasis...EMPHASIS. Not sure how Gillian Flynn and Stephan Graham Jones gave this such appraisal.

Not sure how to rate this one. I picked it up because of the “hype” and didn't really look into what it was so for the first 15/20% of the book I had no idea what was going on.

The trapped aspect of it wasn't bad but the part about the father and the family drama just fell very flat for me and I often found myself just wanting the story to move along already. Ultimately, I didn't hate it, but I just didn't really care for it either. There's a lot of back and forth in time which I really couldn't stand. Some of the characters' idiosyncrasies were kinda funny and I think that characterization was really one of the strongest aspects of this book.

That being said, I can see why someone would love this book and it's not a bad book by any means. I think it's time for me to admit that Kraus might just be one of these authors that aren't for me so take this review with a grain of salt.

Neutral 2.5 rounded up.

Ick.

Okay, so this ended up being way more general fiction than it was either horror (unless you count body horror) or thriller. I think I was expecting something way different than what I was delivered, and while the story told isn’t bad exactly, I get kind of bored with stories involving people working through childhood trauma. Even if that story is told inside the (literal) belly of a whale.

Jay has daddy issues. His father was a lover of the sea, a diver who also took on unpleasant jobs to pay the bills for his large family. Has a big attitude problem, and looks down on anyone who doesn’t view the sea and everything in her the same way he does, including his own son. He expected Jay to follow in his footsteps and become a diver, an activist, a lover of the sea in his own right, and the two grew apart when Jay didn’t want any of that for himself. (Ending spoilers here) Then his father dies, a suicide off his friend’s boat, and Jay feels compelled to retrieve his father’s underwater remains in an attempt to heal the rift in the family that the two of them left behind. He becomes a whale snack, and the rest of the book is him trying to get out of this whale, while also hearing the voice of his dead father and working through all the issues the two of them had with each other.

This one’s more literary than I was expecting, and the pacing is incredibly slow for what it is. While in the belly of the whale, we’re treated to flashbacks in Jay’s life that further defines the relationship between him and his father, interspersed with very short segments about his attempts to get out of the whale. See, the whale just seems like a metaphor for the grief and guilt Jay carries around with him surrounding his father and Jay leaving home, and while I’m sure there’s something there for people that appeals to, I was here for whale science and “holy shit I’m swallowed by a whale, what do??”

There’s also a ton of visceral body horror, both in Jay and in the whale, leaving me queasy a number of times as I envisioned “Beaky” in his hand, being slowly dissolved by stomach acid, and various other injuries sustained while on his weird physical-and-mental journey.

So, like, it’s a fine book, but just not for me. I made it through out of stubbornness, but it didn’t feel like a rewarding slog through whale stomach contents.

DNF 40% in

Really found the main character to be stupid and insufferable. And 40% in and he has just been eaten by the whale. But also it took forever for him to be eaten. I bet 7% of this book is just him being like:

“Oh n-n-n-noooooo! A whale! Whoooooooooa I'm gonna be eaten if I don't do something!! I must do something! This reminds me of something my father once said. Wh-wh-whoa, I'm eaten!”

This book sounds so interesting and I was so excited to read it. From being described as scientifically accurate and the fact Jay gets swallowed by a whale I was intrigued. The ocean is such a terrifying mystery to me and I thought this kind of book would be great to get my heart rate up but, unfortunately, it didn't do that at all.

I enjoyed the backstory of Jay's relationship with his father and how he ended up in the predicament he's in. I enjoyed all of the knowledge that is jam packed in this book of diving culture, technique, diving equipment, and the ocean in general. The description of the ocean and the habitat that the narrator was describing was great and put me in the setting. I also enjoyed the way each chapter was a mix between past and present.

However, with all of that I was also bored and annoyed. For me, personally, I found Jay extremely annoying even though I sympathize with him. I found all of the information and descriptions fascinating but I also felt like it went on for far too long. At 39% the event described in the description is finally happening and I was rather uninterested. I've been coming back and trying to read more but haven't been able to keep my attention on it or get into it. So, at 40% I've officially given up, HOWEVER, I am still very interested in where the story goes. I think Jay has such potential to grow during this event and would love to see how that plays out. So while I'm giving up at the moment I fully plan on returning to this book at a later time even though I have no idea when that will be. When that happens I will update my review.

Honestly, I had to do a Google search on Daniel Kraus to find out how he managed so many lines of print from the NYT to NPR for what is a mediocre, gastrointestinal thriller. Is he married to Anna Wintour? Does he have a pleasure island with comprehensive guest logs? Can he snag backstage passes to Taylor Swift?

This should have been a novella. Just cleave the out all the sad father/son dynamics. We're supposed to believe that Jay is shunned by the local community, his shoes spat on as he passes by for refusing to see his father as his cancer progressed? I'll allow for some emo teenaged angst but come on. Mitt may have been an accomplished local diver but he's was also a belligerent asshole that got kicked from job to job to the point he was fishing golf balls out of the local club's water traps. Meanwhile Jay has been living on the kindness of strangers for most of his teenaged years. Sounds like he was really reviled. Of course without the father son clash how would we get that whale telepathy that becomes essential later on?

Let's just focus on the gooey viscera inside the 60-ton sperm whale that has swallowed Jay. Let's just revel in the squishy, mucid, intestinal, gelatinous and fetid environment that he less than hour to escape from before his oxygen runs out. Jay does some hella whale McGyvering outta that stomach while enduring John Wick levels of abuse. That was fun.

But back to my confusion, the film rights have already been secured. Do they even read these things before snatching them up? I relish the thought of experiencing 90 minutes of barely illuminated dark amidst the persistent sounds of intestinal squelching. Like being trapped in a dryer on tumble filled with jello and a dozen silicone dildos.

 So I picked this up because I recently read an article that announced it had been picked up for screen adaptation, and I got curious. It was being pushed as a thriller, and after reading the summary, I wanted to know how this would play out if it were adapted for the screen.
The thing is, I???m honestly not sure how they???re going to pull this off in a visual medium. This novel is largely made up of flashbacks and Jay Gardiner???s musings, punctuated by spurts of harrowing (and I mean HARROWING) action as he tries to get out of the whale before he runs out of air. And the point of this novel isn???t really the action, but what???s going on in Jay???s head: the ???demons??? the summary says he???s trying to escape.
See, when I picked this up I thought it would be along the lines of The Martian, wherein a scientist finds himself stuck on Mars and has to find a way to get back to Earth before he reaches the limits of his problem-solving ingenuity. With that in mind I thought this novel???s one-hour time limit would create a more frenetic, compressed story than what was presented in Weir???s novel, with Jay pushed to the very limits of his ingenuity trying to find a way out before he died in the whale???s guts or his air ran out. But that???s not what this novel???s about. In fact, comparing it to The Martian wasn???t right, either. It???s a lot more like the Book of Jonah - which, yes, I realize is VERY on the nose in this case, but the two align thematically in ways that I didn???t expect. Just as Jonah finds himself in the belly of the whale because he???s trying to run away from doing the things God wants him to do, so too does Jay (and don???t those two names parallel each other?). The difference is, Jay isn???t running from God, but from his fraught history with his father (which is kind of the same thing, come to think of it).
So what this novel???s about, aside from the bits about trying to get out of the whale, is about Jay trying to navigate and negotiate his complicated relationship with his father, trying to find closure. This novel hones in on that relationship, and though it???s hard to relate to the specifics of Jay???s relationship with his father, the shape of it will likely be familiar to a lot of readers. Because this novel isn???t about trying to escape the belly of a whale in an hour, but about the complicated relationship of parents and children: the ways each can shape the other, for better and for worse. It also asks questions about forgiveness, and grief, and how those two things are made even more complicated and bittersweet when one believes one was hurt by one???s parents as a child. And most importantly, it???s about bridging that gap: finding a middle ground between the child-who-is-now-an-adult and the parent, finding ways to finally see each other eye-to-eye.
And I have to say, it pulls that aspect off pretty well. The chapters are short and choppy, jumping from past to present, in a way that???s kind of reminiscent of how time tends to get weird when one is a dangerous situation. That trick with time gives the story some breathing room, lets the story unfold on its own and lets the reader really come to understand Jay???s relationship with his father. It also ties Jay???s past and the whale escape together in a way that is very emotionally impactful - enough that I actually got choked up in certain points. This is the aspect of the novel that I worry might not translate very well onscreen, because I think it???s the beating heart of this story and it would be sad to see that get flattened or ripped out completely.
It also helps that the characters are easy to latch onto. Jay is, frankly speaking, kind of pathetic but in a relatable way: so deeply wounded by his past with his father, and now also deeply regretting not going to see him in his last moments, that he dives headlong (sorry) into a hare-brained scheme that lands him in the belly of the whale. His memories of his father are initially very unflattering, but as he manages to recover more and more of his memories, he begins to realize that maybe, just maybe, his father isn???t the only one he can blame for the way his life turned out. His father is not COMPLETELY innocent, of course, but Jay slowly comes to realize that maybe, just maybe, he didn???t completely understand his father, just as his father never completely understood him.
So overall, this novel is very definitely worth a read, but don???t expect it to be all high-octane, MacGyver-esque situations. While there ARE a few thrilling (and admittedly gross) moments of action, this book has a deeply emotional core that I hope will be translated well to the small or big screen. Readers who have (or had) a fraught relationship with their parent/s and/or parental figure/s will likely have a very strong emotional reaction, so having a box of tissues nearby is recommended. 

I went into this book prepared to torture my thalassophobia and claustrophobia. Instead, I was just subjected to a guy dealing with major “my daddy didn't love me” daddy issues. I have enough of my own daddy issues to deal with, thank you very much. The only tension I felt was seeing how much oxygen the guy had left at the top of each chapter...I think if I want that thrill again, I'll just hold my breath next time I'm in a pool. The pacing was so weird. It took half the book to get into the whale and then everything after that felt so rushed. The best I can give this is meh.