Star of the Sea

By Joseph O’Connor
Really I picked up this book because it was on sale (only $3.95!) and because the cover blurb mentioned something about a monster stalking the decks of a ship, at night. So naturally I thought it would be about vampires. Really, there should be some kind of government inquiry into book jacket blurb writers because needless to say this book has nothing to do with vampires. OK, possibly I am obsessed with vampires, but what would you think the word “monster” is meant to represent, particularly when associated with “night”? (Apart from werewolves, maybe).

Lack of vampires not withstanding, this book was actually very absorbing. When I am trying to recommend a film to someone, I might say “I wouldn’t mind paying full price for that” or “Cheap Tuesday flick, man” or “Wait for it on video, bud” or just a bald “Don’t bother”. I think Star of the Sea classifies easily as a Cheap Tuesday book, possibly even a “Wouldn’t mind paying full price”, so feel free to ask for a lend of my copy.

The Star of the Sea is actually about the Irish potato famine. There are many characters involved, one of whom is a poor Irish peasant who has been appointed the task of murdering an Irish aristocrat on the trip over the Atlantic to America. Though the present-day plot is set on board, there are many flashbacks, in order to highlight who the characters are and how they got that way. It is very successful in showing the reality of the famine and how shocking it must have been; also the realities of travelling by ship back then and how yucky that must have been; also also some of the realities of immigration, and how enormous a decision this must be.

There is even a bit of post-modernism in there (I think it’s post-modernism, anyway, you post-modernists will have to tell me) where the aspiring author character despairs of writing a novel about the famine because it is impossible to write about something so terrible. And yet – we are reading a novel about the famine!! How post-modern.

The book is written as if it is a “piecing together of the facts”, well after the events occurred, and so is written from many different viewpoints and includes parts written as the Captain’s Log, unpublished memoirs or fiction by some of the characters (drawing heavily on actual factuals, of course) and so on. Also, in between each chapter the author has included an extract from letters written by Irish immigrants to the US. Chapters are subheaded things like “In which are sketched certain recollections of The Star of The Sea; the condition of her passengers and the evil which stalked among them”. (Seriously, stalking evil-doers? That can only mean vampires!). I found this all a bit of overkill and distracting from the story; I think it would have worked much better had the author left out all the frilly clever bits. All the chopping and changing made the story seem a bit overworked and diminished its credibility, rather than adding to it. I think the author did A Lot Of Research for this book and By Gad He Was Going To Use It All.

Still – it did make me stay up past my bedtime.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10