Our team at Henrico CASA loves to read… and there’s no better time to read than the summer! In upcoming weeks we’ll be highlighting some of our recent favorites in the hopes that you will enjoy the themes and connections to our work as child advocates.
Synopsis
Whalefall: A Novel is an emotional tale of a seventeen-year-old boy struggling to survive the aftermath of a severely, dysfunctional father/son relationship that culminated with the suicide death of his overbearing father, leaving him drowning in overwhelming grief and guilt.
As written inside the book’s cover, “Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.
The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.”
Why I Recommend…
Full of suspense, Whalefall is a thriller about a young man who has given up on life…only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places. In his attempt to mend the fractured relationships in his life, Jay faces challenges of survival that will surpass his adolescent anger and resentment.
In the depth of the ocean with death looming, the author sets the stage for a reconciliation through ‘trial by fire’ for Jay and invites us to contemplate questions such as 1. Do parents have an obligation to get parenting “right”? and 2. Do children have a responsibility to conform to parental expectations?
Throughout the story, Jay doesn’t understand his father, Mitt, and his deep connection with the ocean. He is resentful of the love Mitt has for the sea, angry to not receive his father’s attention. He describes Mitt as “godless,” but as Jay encounters and experiences the depth of the ocean, he comes to appreciate the beauty and terror of what lies beneath—“A ship of gods from primordial tar . . . a comma in a sentence so large only gods can read it.”
Reluctantly and begrudgingly, Jay starts to see commonalities with his father. Throughout the novel Kraus includes opposing symbols and themes, such as: Light vs. Darkness; Life vs. Death; Loneliness vs. Happiness; Love vs. Hate; Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation; Perception vs. Reality.
The story explores the topics of grief and trauma;
- Part Jonah and the Whale,
- Part lesson on where and who you came from,
- Part making it through the grieving process.
The premise is that Jay’s father committed suicide via the sea after being diagnosed with an incurable case of mesothelioma. The two had a very contentious relationship and Jay’s choices in the final years of his father’s life have led to a strain on his ties with the remaining members of the family. Jay, a 17-year-old boy, decides his shot at redemption is to find Mitt’s skeletal remains in order to give him a proper burial . . . . and then he gets swallowed by a whale . . . .
The themes throughout the novel are many of the same themes running throughout our cases. It’s a book about a relationship between a father and son that is totally mismatched. He thought his father hated him at times. His father also was “a drunk” and couldn’t hold a job down. The only thing that they have in common is the love of the ocean. When Mitt was dying, he begged the family to make Jay come visit him, but Jay refused. Whalefall is a ‘deep dive’ into a snapshot of family relationships.
