Ford has transported us to the New York that was. No, not the bad old days of the 1970s and '80s, when the racism of both public and private sectors fostered crisis after crisis and austerity was somehow deemed the only answer -- but to the 1850s of the antebellum north, which was in many ways the precursor of that more recent history.

Our protagonist is George Harrow, a newspaper man whose economic self-interest makes him stretch out his stories into as many installments as his boss will tolerate, a feeling that is reflected in the structure of this novel, as we are carried along on plot twist after plot twist. (Speaking of twists, I could have used a map. Even for one familiar with the neighborhoods our characters are traversing, the changes in street names and landmarks, as well as the disappearance of a couple of the eponymous Points entirely, will leave one a bit turned around.) Harrow's voice comes through loud and clear, and situates us in the mores and norms of his time and his class. He tells us, for example, that another character sounds like "he hailed from the upper reaches of the Northeast, where they speak like cranky church people." (p. 29) Most of all, here we have an immersion in a retelling of Moby Dick in the characters of Ahab and company ("Call me Ahab," he even says, on page 112; we also get a bit of Coleridge on page 160.) We have as well a bit of history, science, pseudo-science, anthropology, mythology... But the point actually seems to be that which is called up by Baudelaire's words in the epigraph: "Americans so dearly love to be fooled."

It isn't, however, the foolishness of the tabloid papers and their readers as such; rather, it seems to refer to our persistent racism and classism. Americans, then and now, refuse to let them go, cling to them even to their own detriment, always allied with the twin pillars of capitalism and white supremacy -- fooled again and again, and never able to figure out that they've been had. Ford writes it all in, if a bit heavy-handed at times, with such lines as "Only white male Protestants got a lifelong membership." (p. 207) Harrow, Ahab, et al are stymied and turned aside again again by that foolishness. Anti-Black and anti-Irish racism and nativism; the vast gulf between the highs and lows of capitalism; and it's attendant dispossession, organized crime, petty violence, and destruction of social fabric should all feel more or less familiar to the modern reader, because so much of it continues in our time, though we perhaps might have to swap in Latin Americans for Irish. Even the illegal drug trade that eventually drives the story forward could be transposed without much trouble; the opium of yesteryear is the heroin and fentanyl of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. And here we again are still being fooled -- cartels and pharmaceutical companies get rich, illegally or legally, instead of Jacob Astor (who really did make part of his fortune in the opium trade), but those who are already at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are the ones on whose backs those fortunes are still made. The parallels between the grotesque leaders of the parade of fools are so obvious that they don't warrant a mention.

Though it is true that the 1850s in the Five Points could with a costume change easily be mistaken for the 1980s in, say, the Lower East Side. Ford's depiction of New York and its residents also calls to our current moment, in 2019, where once again the vast mass of New York City's residents balance on the edges of solvency -- or have already tumbled over the wrong side and are now trying to catch up or at least keep up appearances -- and are pushed month by month farther into squalor by the bosses and landlords, our affinity for those American foolishnesses driving the whole thing. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2018/11/review-of-ahabs-return-by-jeffrey-ford.... ( )

This was a strange mess of a book. It's not that it wasn't entertaining, but I was unable to abandon myself to this multifaceted fantasy. I found it very strange.

Ahab managed to escape from the whale. After many adventures, including ghosts, a plague and an interlude of feather collecting, Ahab returned to America in 1853 and tracked his missing wife and son to New York City. He was also tracking Ishmael, who had written some crazy book about him that declared him to be dead. In New York, Ahab meets George Harrow, a penny dreadful writer who thinks that a series of fantastical articles can be loosely based on Ahab's search for the missing parties. From then on the story went sort of haywire for me. There was just too much stuff. There were nationalist extremists bent on eradicating Germans, Catholics and blacks. An opium kingpin named Malbaster led a gang of addicted children called the Jolly Host. Malbaster also controlled a zombie-like enforcer called Bartleby, who was last seen scuttling along the ocean floor on his way to Japan. And then there was the woman transformed into a manticore, with the face of a woman, the body of a predator cat and the tail of a scorpion. Finally, there were many references to the process of writing fiction, sharing plots and exercising imagination as a drug. On some level, this book may be a profound exploration of the nature of fiction, but these references might also have been a self indulgent exercise by the author.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. ( )

Ahab's back, looking for his wife and son.

Yes, that Ahab, the crazed captain who went down with the White Whale.

He miraculously survived and has finally made his way home. He turns up at the Gorgon's Mirror, a New York City tabloid newspaper, looking for Ishmael, the writer who killed Ahab off in his novelization of their adventures. Ishmael is gone but hack writer Harrow sees dollar signs behind Ahab's improbable story.

All Ahab wants now is to find his beautiful wife and teenage son.

Harrow gets his boss to fund the quest and he and Ahab go on an adventure into the heart of New York City's Five Points, encountering a drug cartel protected by juvenile addicts and the manticore, a mythological creature (pictured on the book cover). They are joined by Ahab's harpooner Madi, stylized as Daggoo by Ishmael, the staunch street urchin Marvis, and a patchwork-coat wearing female writer and opium-eater, Arabella.

Harrow is in over his head, plunged into a world of ghoulish murders perpetrated by Malbaster and attacked by his zombie-like creature Bartleby. Harrow admits that, in a gunfight, he is as "useless as Millard Fillmore." Luckily, he has the African Madi and the plucky women to protect him.

Ahab's Return by Jeffry Ford reminded me of Terry Pratchett's Dodger, a fun blend of fantasy and literary personages in a historical fantasy. And also Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next novels in which literary characters exist in an alternative world.

John Jacob Aster's opium shipping empire, a forgotten multi-racial and multi-cultural village torn down to make Central Park, the Know Nothing anti-immigrant nativist movement, all figure into the story.

The plot hinges on an interesting concept of fictioneers writing plotlines that become reality.

"I am a devotee of the works of Emerson and believe he's professing that the mind is a reailty engine--it creates reality or at least in some part it helps to create reality." Arabella in Ahab's Return

I enjoyed the novel as great escapist fun. I received a free book from the publisher through a LibraryThing giveaway. ( )

When Captain Ahab suddenly walks into George Harrow's newspaper office and announces that, not only did he not die in pursuit of Moby-Dick, but he requires Harrow's assistance in locating his son, their adventures lead through New York's seedy 1850s underworld and reunite the reader with several familiar characters from the original classic.

I wanted to like this novel so badly as I have a soft spot for parallel/companion novels, but it was just too ... odd. It went off into directions of farcical zaniness and magical realism that I just couldn't find the energy to follow. In addition, there is a distinct lack of 19th-century feel to the entire novel. I have, however, awarded one additional star for the kick-ass women!

I received this ARC via LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program. ( )