HARPOON - Softcover

C.W. Nicol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099543001 ISBN 13: 9780099543008

Publisher: Arrow Books, 1988

Synopsis

Jinsuke, a young village whaler, and Sadayori, an aristocratic samurai, together experience the victories and defeats of the crucial years of the Meiji restoration, the death of the shogunate, the intrusion of six American ships, and the ravages of natural disasters

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Editor Norris asked 20 prominent American and Canadian writers to select short stories they felt were their best from pieces published over the last three years. That two of the finest stories are by John Updike (describing a Boston couple's marriage over several decades, and the husband's discoveries about his wife's ebbed faith and his own failures to her) and Raymond Carver (focusing on a man whose life is nervously balanced between the pull of his lover and his mother; in reaction, he erratically picks up and moves from place to place) comes as no surprise. Nor is it surprising that works by Gail Godwin, Richard Ford, Alice Munro and Alice Adams are finely crafted and moving. The bonus is the inclusion of stories by such lesser-known writers as Stuart Dybek, T. Coraghessan Boyle, David Long, Joy Williams and Ernest J. Finney (whose light, humorous story about bravado in an all-night mall store suddenly becomes a thriller). Norris has provided a short afterword to each story, often quoting from the author's comments on how the piece came to be written.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Nicol uses two young men from different social classes to depict Japan in the years immediately following the opening of that country to the West in the 1850s. Jinsuke is the eldest son of the whaling village's head harpooner. On the day Jinsuke makes his first big kill, he meets Sadayori, a hereditary warrior assigned to study coastal defenses. When Jinsuke loses an arm to a shark, Sadayori arranges for him to be trained to fight one-armed and for him to work on foreign vessels. Jinsuke adopts Western ways, becoming the master of his own ship. Sadayori is caught up in various clan conflicts, often relying on his skill with swords. Nicol sketches an interesting, believable picture of whaling and that period in Japanese history, and he describes violence graphically. However, his characters do not emerge as individuals, and his dialogue is awkward. Disappointing. Ellen Kaye Stoppel, Drake Univ. Law Lib., Des Moines
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow Books
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0099543001
• ISBN 13: 9780099543008
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512