Whalefall
A Novel
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4.1 • 92 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Book Riot, Shelf Awareness, and NPR
The Martian meets 127 Hours in this “astoundingly great” (Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.
Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.
The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.
Suspenseful and cinematic, Whalefall is an “powerfully humane” (Owen King, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about a young man who has given up on life…only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This gripping sci-fi thriller from bestseller Kraus (who previously coauthored the novelization of The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Torro) takes readers quite literally into the belly of the beast. After local diving legend Mitt Gardiner dies in a suicide by drowning, his estranged high school–age son, Jay, sets out to bolster his own reputation as a diver by retrieving his father's remains. Returning to the water after two years away from his domineering dad, Jay makes the risky dive. Instead of locating the body, however, he finds a giant squid, and then a massive sperm whale finds them both. Accidentally ingested, Jay struggles to escape the whale's belly before the creature either digests him or retreats to depths that could crush him. Jay's struggle to free himself from his blubbery prison mirrors his struggle to free himself from his father's shadow, which forms the real heart of the story. Kraus provides solid nautical science alongside the stretchy coincidences that fuel Jay's survival. Just on the brink of horror fiction, especially for the claustrophobic, this deep-sea thrill ride will have readers on the edges of their seats.
Customer Reviews
Glaring Flaws
I changed my rating from 5 stars to 4 for one main reason: the relationship between Jay and his father. To me it felt like that subplot was just justification for emotional abuse. If I were writing this story, I wouldn’t have given the father any time of day and would have had Jay cut himself off from the rest of his family for enabling the father. The ending was also a bit too vague and abrupt for me.
Poetic Masterpiece
One of the most profound and deeply affecting books I’ve ever read. I thought this book would be unrealistic and metaphorical, or possibly realistic but artistically null; instead, the author manages to blend scientific realism with a gut-wrenching emotional narrative in one of the best books I’ve ever read. Absolutely nightmarish in parts—the description of the whale’s second stomach will haunt me for months—but deeply intentional in when it utilizes horror. Please, please read this book, and preferably in one sitting.
Grieved with me
Got me through a family death