The North Water

The North Water is a novel by the English writer Ian McGuire, published in 2016. Its title is the name of the North Water Polynya, a stretch of open sea that whaling ships sailed to in pursuit of the animals whose oil made them valuable.

The book opens in Hull, where the whaling trade is under pressure because paraffin and coal oil have started to replace whale oil. It is against that background that the Volunteer is fitted out and crewed, and it is clear from the beginning that the voyage is a business arrangement between men who do not trust one another.

Patrick Sumner takes the post of ship's surgeon because he has nowhere better to go, having left the army in circumstances he does not discuss. He shares the ship with Drax, who is the most effective harpooner aboard and also entirely without restraint. The two of them are the poles around which the novel is built, and the voyage north becomes a contest between a man with a past and a man with no conscience, in water where nobody can leave.