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Archipelago

4.02 of 5 stars 4.02 · rating details · 53 ratings · 20 reviews

Gavin Weald lives with his six-year-old daughter Ocean and their dog Suzy in a newly rebuilt pink house. It is only a few months since a devastating flood swept through their home, with heartbreaking consequences.

Gavin is trying desperately to carry on, but wakes each night to his daughter's cries and his own fears for the future. One day he does the only thing he can thin...more

Hardcover, 368 pages

Published July 5th 2012 by Simon and Schuster U.K. (first published July 1st 2012)

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The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

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Man Booker Prize Eligible 2012

113th out of 152 books — 216 voters

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Sep 08, 2012 Tudoquemegustaeillegal rated it 3 of 5 stars

Having read Monique Roffey's last tome, With Kisses from his Mouth, I approached her latest oeuvre more in hope than expectation; Kisses was largely autobiographical, whereas Archipelago is a return to her Alma Mater, fiction. Sure enough Roffey narrates a story with a sure footedness & balance that was only fleetingly present in Kisses.
Once again she mines her (bottomless) seam of loss, but the loss of a child is far more comprehensible, and she uses the conceit of travel (i.e. road movie )...more Having read Monique Roffey's last tome, With Kisses from his Mouth, I approached her latest oeuvre more in hope than expectation; Kisses was largely autobiographical, whereas Archipelago is a return to her Alma Mater, fiction. Sure enough Roffey narrates a story with a sure footedness & balance that was only fleetingly present in Kisses.
Once again she mines her (bottomless) seam of loss, but the loss of a child is far more comprehensible, and she uses the conceit of travel (i.e. road movie ) as a vehicle that is universally resonant (helping the medicine go down).

However the acid test . Is Archipelago worth investing £5 and several hours of endeavour, still remains to be answered.

Archipelago ticks several boxes when it comes to a last minute airport afterthought, and will engender envy as you lay on some Baleariac or Grecian atoll , contemplating your return to our recession laden Stygian skies with the Metropolitan daily drudgery and the pervasive depressiveness that is Cameron Britain.

You can only admire the vistoral breadth of the novel, as Gavin the father meanders from one island paradise to another, in his ancien sail boat. Indeed as a land lubber I felt moved to follow Gavin's sails. The novel feels well researched, with an torrential effluence of largely incomprehensible nautical terms. ( the constant reference to Ahab, and hoisting the mainsail induced flashbacks of obscure Beach Boy songs , Robert Newton's Long John Silver and Gregory Peck 's pindown regime). Notwithstanding Roffey's affliction of stylistic tourettic outbursts the prose is lucid, well written, typoless with the episodic discipline underpinning a transparent structure ( the unattributed dialogue working 90% of the time).
Océan and Suzy the dog are sympathetically imagined to the extent that you yearn for the possibility of their narrative, rather than the humourlessly measured angst of psoriasitic Gavin (though I still find the dog biscuit scene worthy of reporting to the CPtA).

Archipelago will make a beautiful film ( breaching the Caribbean black hole), though Roffey will probably not receive a screenplay commission; there is a distinct lack of cogent action and narrative drive ( Batman Returns ennui) . Only Suzy and Océan render credible sympathetic characterisations. The back story of Gavin's loss , his flight, and subsequent travails for someone who has experienced both seems what it is ... superficial. Indeed the novel contains a smorgasbord of issues, Slavery, Tourism, Ecology, Chavez, notwithstanding the pulled punches on racism, which strangely only arises in the Dutch Arses comment.
However these thorny strands are never weaved into a substantive analysis and thus appear as mise en scene wallpaper.
Roffey's strength is her poetic observations ; the wildlife :- flamingoes, tortoises, flying fish, seals, the albino whale, the dolphins; Océan's insights are page charmers : penetrating and life affirmingly naive. From the accuracy and translucency of these sketches of Ocean and the assorted wildlife, Roffey is clearly not observing from the fascistic telescope of say W.C. Fields, but imho she struggles to make Gavin either sympathetic or credible.

Little gripes include the fact that the source of Gavin's finance source/supply is never explained, how to pronounce Océan (e acute ?), the plotless randomness as personified in Phoebe, the punctuative crying, the academic sex scenes, Roffey's embarrassing attempts to write and integrate passable Trini patois ( dem nah learn yah dat pon creative writing course gal?), and the final trite denouement ...
In all a worthy Touristic and Cinematic Caribbean novel but one that should have been much more and thus will probably leave the 2012 bestsellers chart (costa?) untroubled this wet summer.
Camera lite diction : wh'appen ta deh rice n peas?

WebBlog :- http://nnmentoring.co.uk/wordBlog/(less)

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Jul 06, 2012 CuteBadger rated it 5 of 5 stars

After his family home in Trinidad is torn apart by a flood which leaves his family in tatters, Gavin takes his six-year old daughter Ocean and their dog Suzy on a sailing trip to try to run away from their grief. But the sea has a habit of making you address things you'd rather not have to face.

I absolutely loved this book and read it in a single sitting. Gavin, Ocean and Suzy are wonderful characters who you want to look after and protect from the terrible things that have happened to them. The...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Margitte rated it 3 of 5 stars

A good read for a lazy Sunday afternoon. I probably won't remember much of the detail
in the book, but will remember the topic and great feeling I was left with.

I've never been on a long sea journey of any kind. Spending the time with Gavin, Océan and Suzy on this small vessel for two months was certainly an unexpected adventure. I was just as happy as they were when the voyage came to an end! I also wanted to leave all sorrows behind and celebrate the joy of living at the Trinidad festival.

It to...more

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Jun 09, 2012 Sharon Thomson rated it 4 of 5 stars

Gavin Weald’s life is going nowhere. Overweight and depressed, he is on autopilot at work and at home his daughter, Océan and he are just trundling on. When the annual storms start up again Océan begins to have nightmares. A year has passed since the big brown wave washed down the hill and into their house devastating the family.

Gavin decides that they need to escape, so along with their bulldog Suzy they head off across the sea following a dream that Gavin had when he was younger.

At first you w...more

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Sep 16, 2012 Victoria (Eve's Alexandria) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Roffey takes us back to the Trinidad of Green Bicycle, and into the life of middle-aged, middle-income Gavin Weald and his six year old daughter Océan. Like George and Sabine Harwood, they live at the foot of 'the green woman of Trinidad', 'those green hills...curled up and close, like a colossus asleep on her side.' We meet them on a humid day in November 2010, eating macaroni cheese and ice cream with peas for dinner. They're joined at this meal by Suzy, the robust grumbling family dog, and af...more Roffey takes us back to the Trinidad of Green Bicycle, and into the life of middle-aged, middle-income Gavin Weald and his six year old daughter Océan. Like George and Sabine Harwood, they live at the foot of 'the green woman of Trinidad', 'those green hills...curled up and close, like a colossus asleep on her side.' We meet them on a humid day in November 2010, eating macaroni cheese and ice cream with peas for dinner. They're joined at this meal by Suzy, the robust grumbling family dog, and afterwards all three huddle together on a dirty double bed to watch TV. Océan's mother is an ominous absence; later we learn that a second child, a baby boy, is also missing. Some natural disaster is hinted at - a flood, a landslide - that has permanently destroyed the family's happiness.

Gavin is in a sorry state. He hides away in his office at work and falls asleep standing up in toilet cubicles. All the skin is falling off his hands. He has woken up after a tragedy to find that he is alone, old and fat; and that he has lost sight of what life is for. His daughter is fragile with grief, and breaks down into hysterical fits whenever it rains (which is quite often in the rainy season in Trinidad). His dog is also old and fat, and he no longer sure if 'he needs or loves' her.

He didn't become the man he wanted to be. When he was younger he was more himself... Now he is a fat man who married a nice girl and got a good job and had two kids and worked hard and then got his fucking house knocked down in a flood which poured down the hill.

It is a sorry tale of 21st century discontentment compounded by grief. One hell of a mid-life crisis. He recognises that he has to do something - move on, snap out of it, man up - but what and how?

Salvation comes in the form of the Romany, the old Danish sailing boat of his younger days. He will run away; away from work and family and the green hills. Océan and Suzy in tow, he stocks the hold, chucks his mobile phone in the sea and sets sail on a cruise around the archipelagos of the Carribean. Ahead of him is the wide, seductive ocean. At the back of his mind is a nagging dream of his youth, to sail the Romany all the way to the Galapagos.

It reminds me very much of the premise of a children's story. Family trauma: check. Setting out on a redemptive adventure: check. Taking along family pet: check. The scale is bigger and more exotic - this is the Carribean, not Enid Blyton country; and it's the sea, not a lake - but still, there is the same hunger for transformation at the bottom of Gavin's escape from his everyday life. It reminds me of Swallows and Amazons or the Famous Five. The familiarity of the premise is almost comforting. Like those great adventure stories of childhood, Archipelago makes me want to go on an adventure too.

Gavin and his daughter explore the islands of the Carribean through the eyes of tourists and voyeurs who are simultaneously at home and native. Roffey is hard on the 'real' tourists of the book, the Americans and Europeans arriving on their cruise ships 'with surgical scars on both knees', chewing up the Carribean by visiting 8 ports in 10 days. But Gavin and Océan escape this judgement because this is partly their own world, their own place. Subtly Roffey explores the history of the islands through them. Layers of colonisation and settlement, both actual and psychological, are peeled back: first, the Spanish, then the Dutch, who brought over slaves from Africa; then the Americans and, perhaps, in the future, the Venezualans led by Hugo Chavez. Strange to imagine them sitting in a Taco Bell on Aruba, listening to fellow patrons speak a mixture of Dutch and Papiamento, a language developed by slaves and spoken on only three Carribean islands. Strange also to find them watching young black men break-dancing to hip-hop on the streets of Curacao, in a street of Dutch gabled houses strung with neon Christmas lights in the baking hot sun. Roffey writes beautifully about these places and their landscapes; it's not surprising to learn from the Acknowledgements that she has sailed in Gavin and Océan's footsteps herself.

The sea is the dominant landscape of the book. The islands in the text are like the islands in the sea: only temporary respites from the overwhelming presence of the water. For long stretches the only characters in the book are Gavin and the sea. He has turned to it in search of something, although he isn't clear what. Wisdom, forgiveness, the presence of God, a hard slap in the face? He has a romantic attachment to it, a fantasy of his own connection to it, that is partly nostalgia for his youth and partly a yearning towards a Higher Power. It is one of the reasons he called his daughter after it. Water has destroyed his family, but it seems natural to him to return to the water to repair it. But no sooner has he discovered an equilibrium, no sooner does he feel confident, a 'sailor man' again, than he is betrayed once more by the waves. The book is the chronicle of his violent see-sawing confusion: Is nature good, profound and meaningful, or is it ruthless, cruel and destructive?

Roffey invokes the shade of Moby Dick and Captain Ahab's vendetta against the White Whale to explore this theme throughout. She has Gavin explain to precocious Océan that the moral of the story is that Ahab wrongly blamed the White Whale for attacking him. He made it personal when, in fact, nature is not personal. Starbuck understood that taking revenge was pointless, because there was no conscious wrong to direct the revenge against. Gavin's family has also been hurt by a disaster in nature, by heavy rain which is blameless, so how should be resolve his anger about it? He isn't like Ahab; he consciously avoids making that mistake. But instead of seeking revenge he looks for meaning, for a mystery in the sea, the water. This, Roffey seems to say, is as misguided and perverse as attacking it. Archipelago is Gavin's therapuetic journey. Not in a Paulo Coelho sense; he doesn't have to travel in order to come back to himself in peace. Instead the journey is about disrupting his notions of what peace and love and nature are; it's about getting over the search for meaning rather than making meaning.

The sea is massive and there is a sense of its grand entitlement. The sea owns 70 per cent of the world... It owes them nothing. Gavin feels this keenly, for the first time in his life. Now he is aware that the sea isn't interested in him - and yet he's fascinated with her. The sea has no feelings towards him whatsoever, and yet she stirs unfathomably moods in him. The sea doesn't care, cannot card, not one jot, for him and his boat, his child, his dog, and yet they've been held mesmerised... It's as if he is floating on a giant mirror and the sea's purpose is only to reflect himself back. Who the fuck is he, after all?

From this thematic point of view I think the novel is successful; and the development of the sense of place and time and character is very successful. There are some bumps in the telling though. It is true that the plot is very A-B, with neatly lined up dangers and hurdles along the way. They are all things you would expect - storms, pirates, drugs trafficking, wild animals - and there is nothing to put the journey off course. Some of the descriptive passages a little loose and hackneyed. At one point the sea is Gavin's 'mistress' and I groaned outloud. It's probably inevitable that if you describe the sea every other line you're going to loose some originality. And there was something else, an inevitability to the novel which I found disappointing. It didn't have the shock and thrust of Green Bicycle, or that feeling of revelation. So: clever and enjoyable and recommended, but not quite equal to its predecessor. (less)

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Apr 25, 2012 Dan (aka Utterbiblio) rated it 4 of 5 stars

*Longer review to come soon*

This is a wonderful story that tells of a man trying to survive his own grief while caring for his daughter. They set sail for the Galapagos islands to put the recent misery from their lives behind them.

Roffey does a magnificent job of depicting the central character, Gavin's, grief. After losing a member of his family to a flood, Gavin is aimless in life and he retreats to what he knows the best - the sea. Taking his daughter Ocean and his dog Suzy, they travel highs...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Shonaigh Mudie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: recently-read

This follows the journey of a father, daughter and their dog in a grand sailing boat Romanay. The family from Trinidad experience loss in a flood that destroys their family home and lives as a result. The author herself has experience of this, her brothers home in Trinidad was ruined in the 2008 floods. On a whim, the father takes his daughter out of school and the pair sever ties from their homeland on a voyage across the oceans. From the Port of Spain they travel via the Panama canal to the Ga...more

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Aug 08, 2012 Annie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Monique Roffey writes a beautiful novel, one that makes me wish I'd visited the Caribbean or South America before now.

That said, this is a book about one man's journey back to himself. And I can't believe what happened to the dog! Why? So... engaging characters who you come to care about, a pilgrimage type journey across the sea and lots of animals. This is a pretty appealing summer read.

Why the three stars? Some of the descriptions were so imaginative (oyster colour etc) that I often found it d...more

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Oct 29, 2012 For Books' Sake rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Archipelago, the third novel from Orange Prize-nominated Roffey – born in Trinidad, now living in London – is an important and uplifting novel about change, loss, and humans’ place within the world.

When a flash flood destroys his home and his family, Gavin and his little daughter Ocean are left traumatised. Gavin – constrained by his office job and unable to cope any more with his listless and suffering daughter who has been left without a mother – acts on impulse. He packs up Ocean and Suzy th...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Her Royal Orangeness rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pub-2012, best-of-2012, 2012, author-roffey, authors-i-heart

When a flood destroys his home and shatters his family, Gavin decides to run away and pursue his dream of sailing from Trinidad to the Galápagos. He, his six-year-old daughter Océan, and their old dog Suzy climb aboard the Romany and embark on a voyage in which they battle the waves…and their grief.

Archipelago is a lovely novel filled with remarkably life-like characters (Océan is especially fabulous), beautiful imagery, and just the right amount of adventure. One thing that truly impressed me...more

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Aug 08, 2012 Shivanee (Novel Niche) rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012, novel-niche-full-reviews

Excerpted from the full review:

"“The sea makes him feel lonely and yet so very much himself; she makes him gather himself up, a self which has vanished some time ago into the element of air. Overnight, the fluid in his veins is catching up with the fluid and the rhythms of the sea; he feels like the sea appears, placid, powerful.”

For all of our protagonist’s uncertainty, his prevarications on both dry land and shifting water, the quiet splendour of Roffey’s characterization means that we want no...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Sophia rated it 4 of 5 stars

When we meet Gavin he is a broken man, struggling with grief after a terrible tragedy, drowning under the pressure of trying to raise his six year old daughter, Ocean, alone and floundering in a job he no longer cares about. In time, it all becomes too much for him to bear, and one day he walks out of his job, picks up his daughter and dog, and sets sail in his old boat, which had been unused and neglected ever since his marriage. Together this bruised and battered remnants of a family sail from...more When we meet Gavin he is a broken man, struggling with grief after a terrible tragedy, drowning under the pressure of trying to raise his six year old daughter, Ocean, alone and floundering in a job he no longer cares about. In time, it all becomes too much for him to bear, and one day he walks out of his job, picks up his daughter and dog, and sets sail in his old boat, which had been unused and neglected ever since his marriage. Together this bruised and battered remnants of a family sail from Trinidad, to the islands around the coast of Venezuela and beyond, enjoying a new adventure while trying to come to terms with what has happened to them.

Monique Roffey’s greatest strength is her beautiful descriptive writing; she’s able to effortlessly conjure a scene with words that’s much richer and more immersive than any photograph. Read this and be prepared to sail away with Gavin and Ocean, feel the sun on your face and taste the salty tang in the air. The story itself moves quite slowly, and there’s a melancholy feeling to the whole book which matches Gavin and Ocean’s mood. We don’t find out the exact nature of their tragedy until quite a long way through the book, and it has more impact for us having got to know Gavin and Ocean quite well by then.

The book is written in the present tense, which is unusual for a novel that moves at such a leisurely pace – usually the present tense is used to propel a story more quickly, but that’s not the objective here. The author does a good job with both her main characters, especially Ocean, who manages to come across as bright but not unrealistically mature for her age. Ocean is struggling with the massive change in her life but, as a child, she’s adaptable, and arguably copes better than her father, who longs desperately for his old life and finds it impossible to envisage what the future could hold for him.

One of the major themes of Archipelago is the environment, and Gavin and Ocean observe many of the ways in which mankind is slowly destroying its own habitat during their voyage. The book is at least a third travelogue, but Roffey never shies away from the harsh truths that lie beneath the picture perfect beaches and seas.

I’m not sure I loved this quite as much as Monique Roffey’s previous book, which really caught my imagination while also teaching me a lot about Trinidad, its history and culture. Some may find Archipelago a little too slow and sad, but if you enjoy first class descriptive writing and sensitive prose about loss and its aftermath, I would highly recommend this.(less)

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Jun 11, 2012 Andrea rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is such a great book! A flood destroys, Gavin’s home and tears his family apart. He and his daughter, struggle to cope with life after the trauma of the flood, so set off on their boat, along with their dog on a voyage of discovery. They visit beautiful places and sail across vast oceans until they reach the place that Gavin has always dreamed of travelling to.
This book is full of beautiful descriptions of the wonders of the natural world, it also has a very human element to it as well. Yo...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Ellie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary

On the island of Trinidad, floods have destroyed Gavin’s home and wrought havoc on his family. Left to raise his six-year-old daughter, Océan, by himself he’s struggling with work and overwhelming loneliness. When he wakes up one morning he decides he wants to run away; take his boat, his dog and his daughter and sail out into the Caribbean and beyond.

Archipelago has made me want to hire a boat and sail round the Caribbean! Whilst the natural beauty may be a tourism advert, it is balanced by the...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Sophie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

When I first started reading this book, it took me a while to get into it because of the writing style, but a few chapters in I started to really enjoy it. It really makes you want to go sailing because the various places are described really beautifully. The storyline is really nice/tragic and unique. I loved the little girls name aswell - Ocean.

Overall, a really good read and definitely recommend it, especially if you like books about travelling or sailing.

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Sep 25, 2012 Book-shelf Shelf rated it 4 of 5 stars

A thought provoking book which takes you on a journey, not only with natural disasters but also about life, love and what is important. Add to this some beautiful descriptions of the Caribbean and many other places that the characters travel. I would recommend looking up some of the fabulous places, it adds to the pleasure and makes a fantastic book a knockout.

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Jul 24, 2012 !Tæmbuŝu marked it as to-read

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, trinidad

KOBOBOOKS

Reviewed by The Independent (21 Jul 2012), The Guardian (27 Jul 2012), The Independent (12 Aug 2012)

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Mar 08, 2013 Stephanie Mathern rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Amazing book, very visual and well paced. A great novel for escape. Definitely a talented writer, will look for more by this author.

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Jun 12, 2012 Hillingdon Libraries added it

Find this book at Hillingdon Libraries

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Apr 18, 2013 Tamara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Really enjoyed this book, loved the travel aspect & tension at high seas, grief so well communicated without being mawkish. Just a great read.

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About Monique Roffey

Monique Roffey was educated in the UK. Her highly acclaimed debut novel, Sun Dog, was published in 2002. Since then she has worked as a Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation and has held the post of Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Sussex and Chichester universities. In 2010, her second novel, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.

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