North Sun: or, The Voyage of the Whaleship Esther - Ethan Rutherford
Centre For Fiction First Novel Prize 2025 Longlist
This is one of those books that I started recommending to people before I'd finished it. By the time I reached the end I think I loved it a little less than I did at the beginning, but that's not to say that I don't still think this is really good and well worth picking up.
Rutherford's prose is sparse and dreamlike, presented to us in short chapters that are often little more than vignettes but which build into a mosaic of a story that always feels urgent even when the story is frozen in ice or languishing under a baking, eternal sun for months at a time.
This is a novel of mundane horror, of men chasing profit above all else, of pointless violence and cruelty away from any sort of consequence. It's also a novel of strange magic and surreal mythology that often reminded me tonally of the Fallen London games (particularly Sunless Sea). It's bleak and dark and deeply uncomfortable to read in places, and it leaves us with more questions than answers.
This lack of answers was part of why I liked it less at the end than at the beginning. The questions the book sets up in the opening sections are hugely compelling and it doesn't quite manage to walk the line of "satisfactory ambiguity". I wanted just a touch more explanation, a little more why or even what as things wrapped up. But that's a minor criticism, and it's one that can be abated by reflecting on the fact that we see much of this book from the viewpoint of two young boys who have no idea what's going on or why any of this is happening to them.
This is a very ethereal novel and I suspect it's one I'm going to be thinking about for a while.