The Whale Rider

By -
The Whale Rider, by Witi Ihimaera

I was pretty excited when I spotted this novel on the donation table; it's currently not that easy to find in the US.   It's also shorter than I expected!  This cover make it look kind of like a kid's book but I would say that it is maybe more YA.  It's one of those novels that kind of defies age categories, really.

The story is told in two interlocking parts: one side is mythic, about the far past and about the whales.  The other is narrated by a young Maori man, and it's really about his niece, Kahu.  She is the first-born of her generation, and the family patriarch, Koro, is extremely displeased, because he expects a boy to be the chief and carry on the family heritage -- they are descended from the legendary whale rider.  Kahu adores Koro, and spends her childhood following him around, bouyantly ignoring his indifference.

 When an entire pod of whales beaches near the village, Koro believes that it's a watershed moment for his family.  If the whales can be saved and persuaded to go back to the sea, it will be a new birth for the humans of Wharanga too.  If they can't, it will be the end.  But the ancient bull whale that leads this pod misses his wonderful rider.  Is there anyone to take his place?

It's a beautifully crafted novel, and I enjoyed every bit.



A film was made in 2002, and I'd like to watch it.  They made Kahu older (which makes sense; the novel takes her from infancy to maybe 10 or so, and they would have needed five or six actresses), and this film seems to have more martial arts than the story does (which is none).  Looks pretty good, yeah?  It won an award at Sundance.



Comments

  1. BookTapestryFebruary 16, 2019 at 1:59 PM

    I remember the film as beautiful and quite moving. The books sounds different enough to be worth reading, too. Luckily my library has both book and film! Thanks for this review!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ruth @ with freedom and booksFebruary 17, 2019 at 9:04 AM

    I'm going to check the library for this anyway...maybe I'll get lucky. I could read it to my younger ones, and then see if we can find the movie.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ruth @ with freedom and booksFebruary 17, 2019 at 9:06 AM

    P.S. I was able to get both the book and audio of this...and later, we can order a copy of the movie through our library. I'm SHOCKED, I tell ya!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kristen M.February 24, 2019 at 11:57 AM

    This might be a good novel to follow the ARC I recently started -- SEA PEOPLE by Christina Thompson. It's a history coming out next month about the Polynesians and all of the theories and experiments related to their ocean travels. I bet I'll be in a mood for Polynesian lit after I finish!

    ReplyDelete
  5. JeanFebruary 24, 2019 at 1:27 PM

    Indeed, this would be the PERFECT followup! I won't tell you more, I wouldn't want to spoil anything, but you should definitely plan on it. :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more