Whalesong by Robert Siegel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Madeleine L'Engle said that Robert Siegel's Whalesong is a "tale of birth and life and terror and sacrifice and joy" and that it "has the quality of true myth." National Book Award winner Richard Eberhart called this book "A masterful work combining mythology, philosophy, and poetry in a story that is exciting and convincing." It's also a wonderful hero's journey, and it contains a beautiful allegory of redemption. I would give this book ten stars if I could. It's a fantastic, captivating novel, a feast for the imagination, and an indescribably wonderful reading experience.

I am not the type of person who would normally be interested in a novel about whales. Just seeing this book on the shelf, I would have had no interest in reading it. But when I read one of Robert Siegel's essays in Leland Ryken's anthology The Christian Imagination ("The Well at World's End: Poetry, Fantasy, and the Limits of the Inexpressible"), I was absolutely transported, so I sought out this book at our local library. Siegel is a Wheaton grad, and a former prof at Yale and Dartmouth, and he directed the Creative Writing grad program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is an incredible writer, and he also happens to be a Christian.

What other novel about whales could integrate Moby Dick, Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," as well as hints of Beowulf and Edmund Spenser's "Epithalamion"? But readers need to have no experience with those works to simply enjoy the story as it is--it is wonderful.

I know it sounds unlikely that you would be interested in this book, but you should read it. You will have a great reading experience.

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