Luckily, it is not only about seafaring or the life of sea men. Jensen takes a deeper look into a world, build upon and gravitating entirely around the sea, or better The Sea. The book comprises of different smaller stories or episodes (I was having this particular feeling sometimes that I was watching a TV-series of more or less undefended episodes, which is, to my taste, not something by default bad).
The atmosphere of the histories is composed in a (slightly) dark mood- mostly because of the insights provided to the depths of the different personages (not to mention the depths of the sea which is always present as an environment where everything happens, as a leading force of life, of the narration and the foundation of the overall book spirit, as could be presupposed). Those personages often carry different dimensions of brokenness which often tends to be manifested through their actions in the course of the story/-ies.
I really enjoyed the first 500 pages, reading them almost in a measured pace. The last 200, though, I find quite tough to read for no particular reason. It was wither some form of fatigue or just the book did not catch me enough with its stories and people any more. The final was not bad anyway.
Overall, there were plenty of good moments and thoughts which I really liked and was trying to share on the way of my reading.
Update: almost a year later, I still remember the atmosphere of the book, the very *taste* of experiencing it; I think this is the half-star that was missing for 4.
„When we’re wretched, we long for the company of others who also mourn: for the bittersweet confirmation that we aren’t suffering because we’ve been unlucky or made the wrong choices, but because it’s the law of life.*“
„Desire’d never been a demanding inhabitant of his body: it had never the power to rearrange his life. It was not lovemaking he missed as he lay awake.It was a human being.*Did language grow in child like milk teeth?*We thought we knew everything about him. But that’s how life is.When all’s said and done, we can never truly know each other.*Loss was like a blind not rolling up again. Loss was a night that never ended.“
„We’re always coming up with new names for one another. A nickname’s a way of stating that no one belongs to himself. You’re ours now… We know more about you than you know about yourself. We’ve looked at you and seen more of you than you’ll catch in a mirror.
*
But hope stops time, and time only heals when its flow is nor stopped.“„I’d thrown all my dreams of the future overboard , and I had only one wish left: that a storm would come and tear us loose from the becalmment we sat trapped in as if in hardened lava.
*
The whole world was prey, killed by an unknown hunter.“
„Life isn’t like a book. There’s never a final page.
*
Our mother sticks a knife in our heart when we say goodbye on the quay. And we stick a knife in hers when we go. And that’s how we’re connected: through the hurt we inflict on one another.“