Archipelago
A Novel
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4.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
By the author of The Mermaid of Black Conch, a mesmerizing tale of a father and daughter’s sailing adventure from Trinidad to the Galapagos Islands, winner of the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and finalist for the 2014 Orion Book Award
Monique Roffey, vibrant new voice in Caribbean fiction and author of the Costa Book of Year Award-winning The Mermaid of Black Conch and Orange Prize finalist The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, returns with Archipelago, a new novel that is a journey of redemption, healing, and hope in the wake of devastating loss.
When a flood destroys Gavin Weald’s home in Trinidad and rips his family apart, life as he knows it will never be the same. A year later he returns to his house and tries to start over, but when the rainy season arrives, his daughter’s nightmares about the torrents make life there unbearable. So father and daughter—and their dog—embark upon a voyage to make peace with the waters. Their journey takes them far from their Caribbean island home, as they sail through archipelagos, encounter the grandeur of the sea, and meet with the challenges and surprises of the natural world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Roffey's stirring novel is one to place on the shelf next to Moby Dick and other notable seafaring stories. A flood in Trinidad destroys Gavin Weald's house and drowns his baby boy. Desperate to shed his grief, he sails with his six-year-old daughter Ocean and their dog Suzy to the Galapagos, heedless of the danger. Roffey wastes no opportunity to infuse her story with metaphors and lessons that point Gavin toward redemption. He has owned the sturdy Romany for years, since finding it afloat without its skipper, who may or may not haunt her decks. Ocean is a deep old soul, whose posttraumatic-stress tantrums help her discover a philosophy that she can use to guide her dad to a kind of salvation from sadness. There is many a reference to Ahab and Starbuck, and events and encounters, from an albino whale to a woman's tattoo ("further" it reads), are fraught with meaning. That this story has been told many times only speaks to its enduring resonance. Roffey (The White Woman on the Green Bicycle) is a masterful writer whose words are subsumed in the pictures they paint and the tales they spin.
