Whalefall
by Daniel Kraus
I won’t soon forget this novel about a teenage boy who, in a desperate underwater search for the body of father whose approval has always eluded him, is swallowed by a sperm whale chasing a giant squid.
Yes, I’m serious, and so is this book.
Our young protagonist, Jay Gardner, has missed the death of his father, the grizzled, tattooed, legendary diver Mitt Gardner. The pair have never gotten along — Jay wished for a father who loved him instead of one who taught him hard-won lessons, while Mitt wanted a son to whom he could teach the ways of the ocean so that he, too, would become one with the underwater world.
A final, irreparable tear in their relationship leads to Jay moving out at 15. At 17, when his father is diagnosed with fatal cancer, he refuses to come home. Mitt, facing life on his own terms as ever, jumps overboard while fishing with his best friend instead of dying dry and land-bound.
Now, overcome with grief, Jay is forced to reckon with the past and his own decisions. Thus, he goes on one final begrudging dive to find his father’s bones and prove to the world he was worthy of being Mitt Gardners son. We can forgive him his logic, he is 17.
This fantastical sounding story is one of the utmost seriousness. It is serious about the soul of humanity, the bonds of family and mankind’s relationship to nature. It is an homage to the haunting beauty of the sea and its denizens, and the elusive, tangled relationships between fathers and sons.
And then there is the matter of our young Jay being swallowed by a whale.
Surely no author could manage to make something so farfetched into my worst, most utterly realistic nightmare? Ah, but Daniel Kraus does. The nausea inducing belly of the world’s most massive creature is a wet sleeping bag entrapping Jay — with only his father’s endless advice and his own wits to help him get out.
The violence is visceral as the author writes in the tense staccato burps of the underwater. Jay’s fight to survive inside the belly of the whale is a play by play of monstrous beauty.
Along with Jay, his father and the whale, another character haunts this book: Collective humanity, inflicting unending damage upon mother nature. Inside the whales belly Jay discovers a box of Brillo, a brine encrusted old gym sock and more than a few wadded up plastic bags that could pass for squid to an endlessly hungry mammal.
Whalefall, the title here, refers to the majestic last act of the giant creature falling to the bottom of the ocean so that his blubber and bones will become the bounty on which the next generation of life will feast and grow.
Much like a father and his son.