The Ark of Marindor

By Barry Targan

Book Overview

A smart and dangerous criminal, with a face like fractured porcelain, has invaded Katherine Dennison's perfect floating world and is now telling her that she doesn't seem to know how things go. "'Is... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878448803
• ISBN13: 9781878448804
• Release Date: May 1998
• Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

An inverted "Odyssey"

This novel by Barry Targan (1932- ), who has published poetry and other prose, is his maiden voyage into the realm of maritime literature. The narrative is an inverted "Odyssey": a woman sails away from the memory of an unfaithful spouse and a dead son. Incorporating flashbacks, Targan's book details the concluding leg of a picaresque journey by Katherine Dennison, from the steamy jungle of Southeast Asia to the foggy coastline of northeast America. Dennison is a seafarer's daughter born at sea, a wartime photojournalist turned children's writer, and, most importantly, a skilled sailor. She comes to realize that she has always believed in mythic creatures and sought mythic resolutions." In her a search for sunken treasure (in the modern-day form of a valuable computer disk), the all-too-human characters with whom her argosy crosses paths include a powerful magus, a witless satyr, a violated sea nymph, and an amoral demon. Like Ulysses, Dennison survives the deadly fury of nature and the calculating treachery of man by her wits, demonstrating a mastery of ship and self, eventually finding an epiphanic release from the vessel which has served as the life-long incarnation of both her freedom and her restriction.

A stunning adventure story

The other reviewer criticizes errors in the nautical and navigational passages in this book, but I was so dazzled by the story that I easily overlooked them. I've read this book twice, 2 years apart, and loved it both times. The range of human experiences is wonderful, the writing is tight, the plot left my heart thumping. I've loaned the book to friends who felt the same. Read and enjoy.