Precise control of tone.

On page 66 someone asks “And who is Miss Chumley?”, but it’s not until page 87 that Miss Chumley makes her appearance in these terms:

‘The lightning that struck the top of the mizzenmast ran down, and melted the conductor into white hot drops. The mast split and flinders shot every way into the mist. The deckhead burst open and the electrical fluid destroyed me. It surrounded the girl who stood before me with a white line of light.’

This is only a page after we’ve met the teeth-grittingly awful Lady Somerset which I’ll edit down as we don’t have all day:

‘...she broke from him, insinuated herself in my direction, gazed earnestly up into my eyes as if we were present at an occasion of most moving importance, then insinuated herself back to our captain and murmured in a deep contralto voice, “Such pleasure!” … I was lifting my hand towards hers when with a movement like that of weed in water she swung both hands in the other direction and moaned again.
“Dearest, valuable Janet!”
There was little doubt about the nature of valuable Janet.’

Yet later when Talbot goes down into the bowels of the ship and speaks to the Purser and then Summers and Benét the tone becomes sinister and ominous.

Other sights to enjoy as you read are how the ship appears to take on a supernatural aspect, like she’s something alive and responsive. Talbot and the ship appear to be linked in some way. He is injured as she is damaged; she comes to close quarters with the other ship as Talbot comes to close quarters with Miss Chumley; Talbot is torn from Miss Chumley as the ship begins to fall apart. The ship seems to respond to Talbot, sometimes in sympathy and sometimes in revolt.

The novel’s a lot of fun. Highly readable, funny and sinister by turns. Hope Golding writes a third part. ( )

Segunda novela, tras Ritos de paso, de la llamada "Trilogía del mar", en "Cuerpo a cuerpo" el caballero Edmund Talbot, reemprende la escritura de su diario a bordo del baqueteado navío que, en medio del calor, de la quietud y de las calimas tropicales, prosigue su larga travesía hacia Australia en la época de las guerras napoleónicas. Nuevas experiencias, como son el peligro inminente y el descubrimiento del amor como revelación deslumbradora, sirven a William Golding -autor de "El Señor de las Moscas"- para seguir forjando este magistral relato de aprendizaje y prodigiosa recreación histórica que se desarrolla a través de tres novelas ("Ritos de paso", "Cuerpo a cuerpo" y "Fuego en las entrañas"), las cuales, pese a integrar una unidad, admiten cada una de por sí una lectura independiente.

Vocab gathered during my first reading of this book, in 2012:

> tunbelly (8) – a potbelly
> truculence (31) – aggressiveness, defiance
> bathos (75) – ludicrous descent from the elevated to the ordinary in writing or speech
> emollient (?) – soothing, softening – (n.) ointment or other softening application
> embonpoint (84, 238) – French – excessive plumpness or stoutness (lit. “in good condition”)
> peroration (115) – concluding part of an oration
> cachinnation (130) (FDB 105) – loud or immoderate laughter [caccini – Italian singer and composer; cachinnate – laugh loudly or immoderately]
> inimical (146) (FDB 180) – unfavorable (to); unfriendly; hostile
> glissade (146) – sliding or gliding step (dance); skilled glide over snow or ice in descending a mountain, as on skis or a toboggan [what the heck?]
> onge (229) – leave-taking, farewell; permission to depart; dismissal; bow or obeisance
> ichor (245) – an ethereal fluid supposed to flow in the veins of the gods; an acrid, watery discharge, as from an ulcer or wound [um, aren't these contradictory?]
> catenaries (256) – relating to a chain or linked series
> firkin (281) – small cask, 1/4 barrel
> medlar (281) – small tree with fruit like a crab apple that is inedible until the early stages of decay; the fruit of these trees ( )

Golding is famed for his 'Lord of the Flies' but his Sea Trilogy is a greater achievement, putting you right in the action and perfectly recreating the trials of travelling by sea from England to Australia. ( )

One should never ignore any nautical fiction – or non-fiction for that matter. There are so many classics. William Golding (of [book:Lord of the Flies] fame) won all sorts of prizes including the prestigious English Booker Prize for [book:Rites Of Passage], I stumbled across its sequel, entitled Close Quarters in a bibliography of books about the sea. Both books recreate life aboard a nineteenth century sailing vessel as seen through the eyes of Edmund Talbot, a passenger on his way to the Antipodes. Rites and Close Quarters are narrated in the form of his journal. Rites ends with the mysterious death of Robert Collev, a clergyman on board, Ironically, Close Quarters, the sequel, begins with Talbot's qualification that he no
longer has any story to tell. Wrong.

The ship is severely damaged during a freak squall because of the inaction of a drunken mate. Becalmed after the storm, they drift close to another British ship bound for India whose captain reports that the war with France (subject of all those O'Brian and Forester novels) is over. The crews and passengers use the ships' proximity and lack of momentum to celebrate the end of the war with a dance. Talbot
falls in love with one of the other ship's passengers, momentarily causing him to contemplate abandoning his prospective career in the Antipodes. That momentary love affair colors his actions for the rest of the voyage.

Wind arrives suddenly and the ships must continue on their way. Golding must have done his research, for the setting rings true. Eighteenth century ships were micro-universes, at the mercy of the sea, waves and wind. There is a vivid scene as Talbot makes his way below decks toward the bow, inthe darkness of the hold, the only light supplied by swinging lanterns providing tiny beacons as the ship
rolls wildly, its motion intensified by the damaged masts. Much shorter from the wind damage, they increased the rocking motion of the ship, much as the oscillations of a pendulum are much quicker, the shorter the pendulum. A completely dismasted ship "can have a roll so brief there is no living within it," explains one of the crew.

Soon Talbot's philosophical speculations become intertwined with seasickness, sloping decks and the realization that the ship is in danger of sinking. The ship's carpenter poking around, looking for spreading planks does not increase his confidence. Nor does the movement of the deck as the waves slide under the keel. The lieutenants reveal they no longer are able to sail before the wind and must rely on the currents to drift them "downhill" (as he is told to reassure the other passengers) until they reach Australia. Unfortunately, how they get there Golding postpones to the third volume. Creep! ( )