"Forty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas . . ."So begins the c...
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Jan 20, 2011
Nate
rated it: 
Science fiction without science, magical realism without magic, surrealism shorn of its major concerns and retuned to human emotion. Somewhere triangulating but outside all of these concerns, lies a certain sort of writing that I tend to find terribly involving. This example of this strange territory is a compressed chronicle of 40+ years of marriage on a kind of floating garden, its two occupants falling into their (lack of) relationship just as the outside world recedes beyond the horizon (or
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Jan 06, 2009
Matthew
rated it: 
A myth? An allegory? A fariy-less fairy tale? An improbably intricate and most fabulous dream? All of the above? Who knows. Who cares! Such a sumptuous little treat of a book! If you like words, if you love language, if you enjoy mini-novels that have been painstakingly detailed and read like urgent transmissions from some other, far more fantastical (yet somehow completely and compellingly convincing) realm, then dive right in. A woman, Mrs. Unguentine, tells the story of her time on a barge--o
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Feb 26, 2011
Charles Dee
rated it:
A drunken Mr. Unguentine falls from the railing of the barge, thus ending a forty year marriage that began with a night of love on a catamaran and was consecrated via Transatlantic cable. He and Mrs. Unguentine, who narrates the story, have lived on their married life on the barge, sailing the seas to avoid extreme seasons, and after the first few years never touching land. Mr. Unguentine takes charge of navigation while Mrs. Unguentine tends to their world where the composting garbage provide
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Sep 09, 2011
Terresa
rated it:
If Charles Burchfield was a writer, he may have written something like this book, fecund, imaginative, blissed out. The enigmatic Unguentine appears only to disappear. By the end I wanted to give him a thrashing with one of his fake fronds, followed by a hasty retreat of myself and Mrs U. to dry land.
For very good reasons, none of that happens, but there exists the lure of the ocean and land, solitude and union, and I am caught in between, enraptured.
For very good reasons, none of that happens, but there exists the lure of the ocean and land, solitude and union, and I am caught in between, enraptured.
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Mar 18, 2010
Spiros
rated it:
Stanley Crawford has managed the seemingly impossible in this novella; he has mastered a prose style that is dense yet evanescent. In the past week I have read this book five times, and at each reading I have come across images which I would swear I hadn't come across in previous readings. How dense? Consider this passage:
"We fueled by night in obscure, foetid ports where I strip-teased on the prow, ringed by candles, to mollify thin-lipped customs officials, while Unguentine whisper More...
"We fueled by night in obscure, foetid ports where I strip-teased on the prow, ringed by candles, to mollify thin-lipped customs officials, while Unguentine whisper More...
Mar 02, 2009
Lysia
rated it:
It gave me the same feeling I had when I read "Life of Pi" - I think not only because I read this while on the beach in the Dominican, but because I am fascinated by what life on or near the water does to people and their relationships. Nothing seemed odd about the lives and interactions of these characters, although the fact is that if this took place in an apartment in the city it would have a radically different effect on me. I did feel sorry for the loss that Mrs. Unguentine felt
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Jun 26, 2010
M.
rated it:
So, I know this is, who was it, William Gass Gordon Lish's (?) favorite book aside Ohle's Motorman? Anyway, I think I read that somewhere, I might be wrong. I feel similar about this book as I did to Ohle's, though I liked this more based on narrative events... what I mean is that like in Motorman, as much as I could recognize, if I stopped to really consider it, that the language here is awesome, I was far too distracted by the enjoyable & fantastic plot to really give the language my attenti
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Jan 31, 2009
Maureen
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Dec 25, 2008
Ben
rated it:
put man and woman alone on barge adrift in ocean. where garbage was, put garden full of trees, goats, and birds. let thing drift for decades, until it solidifies into allegory. enjoy greatly.
"Plagues of insects we have known, chattering hordes came out of the middle of the night to munch their way across half the garden by dawn and multiply faster than we could shoo them away; and heavy night-flying seabirds which have crashed by the flock into the trees as I have wandered about More...
"Plagues of insects we have known, chattering hordes came out of the middle of the night to munch their way across half the garden by dawn and multiply faster than we could shoo them away; and heavy night-flying seabirds which have crashed by the flock into the trees as I have wandered about More...
Dec 14, 2008
Traci
rated it: 
I have to agree with a few other reviewers who describe this book as captivating, odd, irritating...
From the very beginning, I felt like I was in a high school AP English Lit class and had missed the first day. I needed the cliff notes. I felt like there was some grand allegory that I was woefully missing.
As the book went on, it became more interesting in the sense of unpacking a marriage and recognizing the subtleties of a relationship. The most irritating part for me w More...
From the very beginning, I felt like I was in a high school AP English Lit class and had missed the first day. I needed the cliff notes. I felt like there was some grand allegory that I was woefully missing.
As the book went on, it became more interesting in the sense of unpacking a marriage and recognizing the subtleties of a relationship. The most irritating part for me w More...
Jan 24, 2011
Edwin
rated it:
An intriguing, experimental, literary novella. A married couple set sail on a barge, which the husband turns into his own floating world. He plants a small forest of trees, populates it with a variety of animals, and builds structures such as a giant dome out of materials fishes from the ocean's depths, all with no intention of returning to land. Moving throughout the tropics, the wife grows increasingly restless and yearns for a life on solid ground.
And why wouldn't she? Her onl More...
And why wouldn't she? Her onl More...
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Dec 10, 2010
Kirsten
rated it:
"Forty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas..."
Stanley Crawford's novel, The Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine, is superb, magic, primeval, and bizarre.
Crawford is a writer. A writer writer. He managed to create a hypnotic, dream-like adventure with virtually no identifiable plot.
This book is a blurry painting of obsession, control, and intimacy.
It is the (not More...
Stanley Crawford's novel, The Log of the S.S. The Mrs. Unguentine, is superb, magic, primeval, and bizarre.
Crawford is a writer. A writer writer. He managed to create a hypnotic, dream-like adventure with virtually no identifiable plot.
This book is a blurry painting of obsession, control, and intimacy.
It is the (not More...
Oct 24, 2010
Jon
rated it:
In the afterword, Ben Marcus says, "Architectural dreamwork, end-times seascapes so barren they seem cut from the pages of the Bible, cooly-rendered Rube Goldberg apparati, and the crushing sadness that results when you tie your emotional fortunes to a person whose tongue is so fat in his mouth he can barely speak, mark this little masterpiece of novel." So, he liked it. I liked it as well. He goes on to say that one of the major forms of the novel is "an argument against the comp
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Jul 29, 2011
Amy
rated it:
I hesitate to call this a love story, but basically that's what it is...a couple on a boat in the middle of the ocean The boat is practically its own island/biosphere complete with plants, a garden, and livestock. At times the couple takes on an Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden quality. Other times we are exposed to the difficulties in the relationship, mainly stemming from the man's alcoholism and unwillingness to speak and the woman's deceit and dissatisfaction. I was entranced by the setting and
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Nov 23, 2010
Ryan
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From the jacket:
"Forty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas... So begins the courtship of a certain Unguentine to the woman we know only as Mrs. Unguentine, the chronicler of their sad, fantastical tale. For forty years, they sail the seas together, alone on a giant land-covered barge of their own devising. They tend their gardens, raise a child, invent an artificial forest--all the while steering cl More...
"Forty years ago I first linked up with Unguentine and we made love on twin-hulled catamarans, sails a-billow, bless the seas... So begins the courtship of a certain Unguentine to the woman we know only as Mrs. Unguentine, the chronicler of their sad, fantastical tale. For forty years, they sail the seas together, alone on a giant land-covered barge of their own devising. They tend their gardens, raise a child, invent an artificial forest--all the while steering cl More...
Sep 16, 2008
Jim
rated it:
ORIGINALLY published in 1972, Stanley Crawford's allegorical novel "Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine" has been in and out of print for years. Newly reissued after much time adrift, the book is long overdue for a heroic homecoming.
The novel is written in the form of a ship's log, albeit one bereft of dates, times or coordinates. Rather than hard facts, we are presented with the 40-year history of the Unguentine marriage as the couple roams the seven seas aboard a ga More...
The novel is written in the form of a ship's log, albeit one bereft of dates, times or coordinates. Rather than hard facts, we are presented with the 40-year history of the Unguentine marriage as the couple roams the seven seas aboard a ga More...
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Mar 09, 2010
This came on high recommendation from a friend. Considering it's just 100 pages, it is indeed slow going. The boat, the S.S. Mrs. Unguentine, seems to serve as a metaphor for the isolation from the world that couple's sometimes create around them, but also resonates with Adam and Eve and Crawford's own back-to-the-land experience. Not bad, just a bit of a slog.
Jul 17, 2010
i've been reading this book everyday in the train on the way to class and it's so lovely that i almost always miss my stop! i find crawford's writing style to be disconcerting though, but that could just be because i'm so used to writing very clinically. he writes long sentences that turn into paragraphs. however i'm loving the book so far.
Oct 19, 2010
MJ
rated it:
A novel written in the form of a ship's log. The style isn't wholly compelling but Crawford creates a strange, dreamlike world of marriage in a state of exploding madness. Isn't it always?
Good bedside reading for all the recently divorced out there. (Especially those who married sailors).
Good bedside reading for all the recently divorced out there. (Especially those who married sailors).
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Mar 03, 2011
Zach
rated it:
An absurdist look at life as we know it. Fantastical but sad - sad in that life-laid-bare sort of way. A criticism of contemporary existence set in a world perfectly suited to point out its failings. Sad, but also fun to read. At times, rambling like this review.
Feb 01, 2009
Mike
rated it:
Stunning-- it made me think of a worldly version of a Hiyao Miyazaki movie, like Nausicaa of the Divine Winds, where simply building upon an imagined world can invest the reader deeper and deeper into the logic of the unreal.
Feb 06, 2012
Summer
rated it:
This book is really quirky and interesting. It takes two people and puts them into a scenario where they are almost completely separated from society. I may have to read more of Crawford's works after reading this.
Aug 03, 2010
James K.A.
rated it:
An almost surreal little story about a couple wandering the seas on a garbage barge transformed into a mobile Eden, in what appears to be a McCarthy-like post-apocalyptic world (reminiscent of Noah and his family?).
Jan 06, 2011
Amyres
rated it: 
Did not enjoy at all- luckily it was short. I found myself not interested in the characters story and I just wanted to skim through it.
Nov 30, 2009
From atop the dome whose prisms I daily polished the gardens were beautiful beyond any memory I might some day have of them.
Jan 12, 2009
Brian
rated it:
A married couple on a barge sailing the seas with everything needed to sustain life including a forest... Mrs Unguentine writes her story in a log retelling her life with Mr Unguentine. Though in an unlikely and unusual setting as a floating 'island', I couldn't help but think that she was actually a wife recounting her life, as she defined it, from her house in the suburbs. Interesting book.
May 16, 2011
alex
rated it:
virtuosic writing. compelling read for its uniqueness. vague and broad enough to allow readers to deem allegorical if they wish, noah's ark vs alienation of marriage etc etc
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