The Whale at the End of the World

It’s really hard to write about this book without giving away the plot, and I don’t want to do that because much of the pleasure of the story comes from not knowing what’s going to happen next.

When I began reading, I thought it was set to be a bucolic, Local Hero-ish tale of a stock market analyst regaining his connection to nature and discovering his true inner self among a cast of country-dwelling characters. I put characters in italic because the early chapters all seemed a little too twee, and I was starting to think I’d never make it through to the end when the story took a totally unexpected turn. Unexpected to me at least, because I didn’t read the blurb on the back cover.

But once it did turn, I was hooked. So much so I read the entire second half in one day, because I had to discover what was going to happen next. And I really don’t want to talk about any of that, for the reason mentioned above. All I’ll say is that I’m not sure events would have proceeded quite the way they do in the story. And the ending seems to come a little too quickly.

But there’s no denying the book’s readability, or that it’s an unexpected variation on a theme explored by many, many other novels. And no, I’m still not going to say what that is.