Call Me Ishmaelle

NBCC Award winner Guo (Nine Continents, a memoir) delivers a spectacular retelling of Moby-Dick, in which she recasts Ishmael as a 17-year-old girl and Ahab as a Black freedman named Seneca who’s battling the “white devil.” In 1858 England, Ishmaelle’s parents and baby sister die from illness, and her brother leaves their village to find work as a sailor. Following in his footsteps, Ishmaelle leaves behind her tragic and isolated life on a “desolate salt marsh” in Kent for “freedom on the seas.” Disguised as a cabin boy named Ishmael, she makes her way to New York City and then to New Bedford, Mass., where she joins the crew of a Nantucket whaling ship helmed by Captain Seneca, who’s consumed with seeking vengeance against the white whale that took his leg and haunted by his father’s legacy of enslavement. With unyielding resolve, Ishmaelle proves her worth as a sailor among the hardened crew. Privately, she finds solace in her friendships with Kauri, a quiet but steadfast Maori harpooner, and Mr. Hawthorn, the ship’s surgeon, who treats her with “fatherly kindness.” Guo conveys her protagonist’s complex experience of gender in direct and elemental prose as Ishmaelle navigates the “floating life of a half-man half-woman.” Equally captivating are passages from Seneca’s perspective, in which he rues a betrayal by his wife and reveals the depth of his motivations. Newcomers to Moby-Dick and Melville devotees alike will find much to love. (Jan.)