The North Water (2016) by Ian McGuire

 Audiobook Review

The North Water (2016)

by Ian McGuire

   English author Ian McGuire- I just like the work- I read The Abstainer (2020) in 2021, and when I saw he had a new book coming out (White River Crossing), I went back and checked out his 2016 novel, The North Water in Audiobook format on the theory that a novel about an ill-fated whaling journey into the great white north in the 19th century would be more entertaining to listen to than to read.  It certainly was the case for The Abstainer, which featured a panoply of Northern English accents.    McGurie's talent is that he writes historical fiction which feels modern when you read it, with characters who manage to voice philosophical musings while they are starving to death on the arctic icesheet. Compare McGuire to writers like Melville or Joseph Conrad- who express modernist themes but have characters who are moored to their time and place.  McGuire occupies that liminal space between genre and literary fiction that I really favor, and if I can get the Audiobook without waiting, so much the better.