The Mutiny of the Elsinore by Jack London: With Original Annotated
- ISBN-10
- ISBN-13
- 9798545167371
- Pages
- 404
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-07-28
- Author
- Jack London
Description
Some of Jack London's books are better than others, but they are never bad, and he is often at his best on the water, though his stories of the Far North are also quite good. I loved The Sea Wolf and Tales of the Fish Patrol, and again in this book we find him on the ocean, this time at the end of the age of sail in an iron-hulled sailing ship tasked with hauling a load of coal from Baltimore to Seattle around the tip of South America the year before the opening of the Panama Canal. The captain and mates are old time sailing hands, and the crew are a bunch of cuthroats and misfits, presumably because better sailors have by this time all moved to more desirable berths on steam powered ships. The ship has a classic struggle rounding the Horn and finally makes it through after six weeks of devastating storms and currents, much the worse for wear, setting the stage for the inevitable mutiny of the title. It makes for high adventure and a page turning story that fills the reader with anticipation. London is a master of the spare modern writing style that is well suited to his plot driven stories and that sits nicely in the middle between the elaborate descriptive style of most nineteenth century novels and the modernism of writers such as Hemingway who make even London seem ornate.
