The Voyage Home
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A missionary's daughter confronts her father's secrets—and her own life—in this "deeply poetic" novel by the award-winning author of Mr. Wroe's Virgins (The Guardian).
When her missionary father suddenly dies in Nigeria, thirty-seven-year old school teacher Anne Harrington makes the journey from London to retrieve his body. She decides to take the return voyage by container ship, giving herself time to come to terms with his death.
She had no way of knowing what would await her onboard: that she would get involved with two stowaways (clandestinely), and the ship's mate (sexually), and the journey would end in murder. Nor, for that matter, that reading her father's diaries would reveal an illegitimate sibling, whose fate her father was seeking when he died and whom Anne must now attempt to find in order to make peace with herself.
In The Voyage Home, Jane Rogers explores the themes of immigration and colonialism in "a lusciously written tale, rich in emotional nuance" (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The measured pace of Rogers's narrative is perfectly suited to the brooding style of this psychological exploration of past sins and present-day guilt. Anne Harrington's missionary father has died in Africa, so the 37-year-old schoolteacher leaves London to oversee the final disposition of his affairs. Duties completed, Anne returns home via container ship a journey that will take several weeks because she needs the time "to find out what she feels" about his death. Onboard, she begins the ill-advised task of reading the journal he kept in the 1960s when he and her mother first moved to Nigeria. His entries reveal disconcerting secrets that open a chasm between Anne's memories and the written record. Then a stowaway beseeches Anne to help him and his pregnant wife. Anne ignores her gut feelings, does what she thinks is best for the couple and is plunged headlong into a complicated eddy of murder and deception over which she has no control. While Rogers creates a first-rate parallel between the settlement of Anne's internal conflict and the resolution of the issues aboard ship, the novel's conclusion is disappointingly flat. Still, this is a lusciously written tale, rich in emotional nuance. .
