I read The Porpoise before starting on The Starless Sea. Still, I hesitated to write this review because both books invoked similar feelings, and it’s hard for me to disentangle my feelings enough to write coherently about this book.
About The Porpoise
A newborn baby is the sole survivor of a terrifying plane crash.
She is raised in wealthy isolation by an overprotective father. She knows nothing of the rumors about a beautiful young woman hidden from the world.
When a suitor visits, he understands far more than he should. Forced to run for his life, he escapes aboard The Porpoise, an assassin on his tail.
So begins a wild adventure of a novel, damp with salt spray, blood, and tears. A novel that leaps from the modern era to ancient times; a novel that soars, sails, and burns long and bright; a novel that almost drowns in grief yet swims ashore; in which pirates rampage, a princess wins a wrestler’s hand, and ghost women with lampreys’ teeth drag a man to hell – and in which the members of a shattered family, adrift in a violent world, journey toward a place called home.
~ Synopsis from goodreads
My Review of The Porpoise
This is not an easy book to read. I am unfamiliar with the original myth of Apollonius or the story of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. So, The Porpoise was my first exposure to these stories.
The book, however, starts with the modern story of a plane crash with Angelica, a young girl. When her mother was pregnant with her, she got into a terrible plane crash that Angelica only survived by being cut out of the womb. Her rich and powerful father is first overcome by grief and later starts isolating, controlling, and sexually abusing his daughter, whom he sees as a substitute for his dead wife. One day a young man named Darius arrives to take care of an art deal with Phillipe. He falls for Angelica and tries to rescue her, but he is beaten by her father and followed by his henchman. Darius escapes on a boat with three of his friends.
This is where the story escapes into mythology. On the boat, Darius suddenly turns into Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Much of the rest of the book retells his story. It involves ocean voyages, violent battles, and an estranged daughter (hmm, I am starting to see a pattern emerge here). Even Shakespeare himself pops up at one point, and I had to laugh at the madness of it all.
At some point, I lost the point of the book. There were just so many crazy things happening. But despite sometimes losing track of the plot, I loved the book. It’s probably one of the more unique books I read this year. It’s also very cleverly written, with all the stories merging and making sense.
That said, this isn’t a book that will appeal to everyone. There’s some very disturbing sexual abuse, mental health, and no real happy ending, which was very disappointing, as I wanted Angelica to escape her fate.
Loved this book, but it’s not something I’d recommend for a casual reader, and it’s nothing like his previous novel – The curious incident of the dog in the night-time.
