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Submergence

J.M. Ledgard

3.58 · Rating details · 1,841 ratings · 278 reviews

In a room with no windows on the coast of Africa, an Englishman, James More, is held captive by jihadist fighters. Posing as a water expert to report on al-Qaeda activity in the area, he now faces extreme privation, mock executions, and forced marches through the arid badlands of Somalia. Thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, Danielle Flinders, a biomathematician, ...more

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Paperback, 209 pages

Published March 26th 2013 by Coffee House Press (first published July 21st 2011)

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Apr 23, 2018 Maria Espadinha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Reflexões sobre Vida e Morte

Senti este livro como um encontro entre a vida e a morte, explorado sob duas vertentes:

Uma metafórica, através dum amor fortuito entre um espião inglês em cativeiro, aprisionado por um grupo da al-Qaeda, (uma situação que estará em tudo, próxima do corredor da morte) e uma biomatemática que se dedica à exploração das profundezas dos oceanos (a água é por si só um símbolo de vida, já que consta que foi por lá que tudo começou)...

A outra perspectiva resulta duma combina Reflexões sobre Vida e Morte

Senti este livro como um encontro entre a vida e a morte, explorado sob duas vertentes:

Uma metafórica, através dum amor fortuito entre um espião inglês em cativeiro, aprisionado por um grupo da al-Qaeda, (uma situação que estará em tudo, próxima do corredor da morte) e uma biomatemática que se dedica à exploração das profundezas dos oceanos (a água é por si só um símbolo de vida, já que consta que foi por lá que tudo começou)...

A outra perspectiva resulta duma combinação científico-filosófica, sendo particularmente notória na passagem seguinte, que transcrevo em inglês, no original:

"We cannot talk with definition about our souls, but it is certain that we will decompose. Some dust of our bodies may end up in a horse, wasp, cockerel, frog, flower, or leaf, but for every one of these sensational assemblies there are a quintillion microorganisms. It is far likelier that the greater part of us will become protists than a skyscraping dormouse. What is likely is that, sooner or later, carried in the wind and in rivers, or your graveyard engulfed in the sea, a portion of each of us will be given new life in the cracks, vents, or pools of molten sulphur on which the tonguefish skate. You will be in Hades, the staying place of the spirits of the dead. You will be drowned in oblivion, the River Lethe, swallowing water to erase all memory. It will not be the nourishing womb you began your life in. It will be a submergence. You will take your place in the boiling-hot fissures, among the teeming hordes of nameless microorganisms that mimic no forms, because they are the foundation of all forms. In your reanimation you will be aware only that you are a fragment of what once was, and are no longer dead"

A morte é aqui encarada como uma decomposição, onde submergimos para de novo emergir -- ressurgimos numa flor, num caule, numa folha, etc, etc,...

A Vida gerada na Morte dá continuidade ao Fim...
A Morte é encarada como um Recomeço -- um Regresso à Fonte!

Somos parte integrante dum todo continuadamente reciclável, onde a morte não tem lugar -- há apenas um processo contínuo onde novas formas surgem, em substituição doutras que se degradam!...

"Submersos" é um livro estranho, filosófico, introspectivo...
Parece chato, mas não é!...
Se fosse chato, eu não lhe pegava! ;) ...more

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Jul 26, 2014 Kelly (and the Book Boar) rated it did not like it

Shelves: read-in-2014

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/

A couple of months ago some dillweed wrote this article attempting to shame adults who read YA books. In said article, she name-dropped a bunch of authors who wrote well-known classics, as well as this selection. She said of Submergence:

"A few months ago I read the very literary novel Submergence, which ends with a death so shattering it’s been rattling around in my head ever since. (If it's actually a death! Adult novels often embr ...more

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Jan 21, 2014 Robin Sloan rated it it was amazing

In an interview, Ledgard called this book an attempt at "planetary writing." Well: the attempt succeeded, and the result is a novel simultaneously (a) perfectly of its time, and (b) dizzyingly beyond it. A stunning achievement and, bonus, a great read.

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Nov 19, 2013 Brian rated it it was amazing

This is a perfectly told story detailing the experience of two protagonists plumbing the depths of humanity - both personal and corporate - in ways figurative and literal. There's a love story that is beautifully constructed, a rich (and obviously very well researched) narrative of jihadists in Somalia, told via wondrous sentences such as:

Heaven was like being tuned out. You entered in and were suffused in an equal light, without sun or storms, never atmospheric, and were met also by one equal s ...more

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Feb 14, 2013 Steve rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels

A couple weeks after reading it, I still don't know quite what to say about Submergence except that it's phenomenal, one of the best novels I've read in a very long time. It's philosophical, provoking questions about how best to respond to the world in its complexities, whether by focusing inward or outward. And Ledgard, perhaps through his experience as a journalist, manages the tricky feat of making the terrorists who kidnap the protagonist (that's no spoiler, it's the first page) into complex ...more

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Dec 07, 2012 Lori rated it liked it

Shelves: arc-reviewers-copy, fiction

Read 12/24/13 - 12/27/13
3 Stars - Recommended to those who are already fans of hostage-slash-love-slash-deep-thoughts-about oceanic-life-and-god-and-angels-and-hell-and-death novels told through the past and present experiences of both main characters
Pgs: 212
Publisher: Coffee House Press

I haven't written an actual, real length review since September, so go figure that I find myself itching to write one on a book that everyone else raves about but that has left me feeling incredibly underwhelmed. Read 12/24/13 - 12/27/13
3 Stars - Recommended to those who are already fans of hostage-slash-love-slash-deep-thoughts-about oceanic-life-and-god-and-angels-and-hell-and-death novels told through the past and present experiences of both main characters
Pgs: 212
Publisher: Coffee House Press

I haven't written an actual, real length review since September, so go figure that I find myself itching to write one on a book that everyone else raves about but that has left me feeling incredibly underwhelmed.

Submergence, to be fair, isn't the type of book I would normally be drawn to on my own. The jacket copy alone was enough to keep it sitting in my unsolicited arc pile for countless months: James, an Englishman, is held hostage by a bunch of jihad fighters in Africa; a thousand miles away Danielle, a French bio-mathematician, prepares to dive down into the great oceanic depths in a submersible; the two recall their chance encounter and short lived fling as they prepare for what's to come.

This week, I found myself with some free reading time - two months ahead in my CCLaP reading, three months ahead in the upcoming TNBBC author/reader line-up - so I threw my goodreads To-Read shelf out into the ether and asked Twitter to hand pick my next read. Submergence won by a landslide.

It sucked me in quickly enough. The first 40 pages or so passed by pretty smoothly. The next 40, the same. Around the 100 page mark, though, I began to realize that I hadn't yet felt any sort of connection to the main characters or their current ordeals, which had a numbing effect on the constant recollection of their short romance together the year prior. Halfway into the book, and I'm feeling emotionally removed, even cold, towards our protagonists? This does not bode well, right?...

Sprinkled pretty generously throughout the novel, perhaps to break up the monotony of James' suffering at the hands of the jihads in Africa, and Danny's preparations for her upcoming deep sea journey, JM Ledgard allows them time to discuss some pretty heavy topics. They toy with how exploring the vast, deep, darkness of the ocean floor is comparable - and even more complicated - than exploring the wide openness of outer space; whether or not they believe in God and whether God had the foresight to create enough angels to look over us all; how if falling down into the ocean is like falling down into hell then climbing up out of the depths is like climbing up towards the heavens; how the smallest, slightest microbes in the darkest corners of the ocean are capable of out-surviving humanity so long as we just leave them alone; how evolution is a friend and an enemy to most species, including our own...

While these ideas, in and of themselves, are quite intriguing, I felt that James and Danny didn't take them as far as they could have. Their conversations left me sloshing about in half-formed concepts and aching for more "meat and muscle". This speaks to how I feel Ledgard handled his character development overall. I can't help but imagine James and Danny as half-formed, too. They're all shell and skin with very little heart. Like cardboard cut-outs. Only.. fleshier? I know how awful that must sound. It could just be Ledgard's writing style; it reminded me very much of JM Cotzee and JG Ballard (oh my, could it have something to do with first name initials?!) They all take this very clinical, very dry, outside-observationist approach to story telling. As if watching events unfold behind a glass window. As if everything had the emotion purposely blown out of it, leaving it all.. hollow.

In the end, though it was a fairly quick read, Submergence left me floating along, anticipating a great big crushing wave that just never came. ...more

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Nov 11, 2018 Bülent Özgün rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Çok satar öğeler ile beslediğim okur algımı nasıl cezbetti bu kitap, anlamadım.

Ana roman kişileri: Afrika'da işkence gören bir gizli ajan ve okyanus bilimci bir matematikçi.

İkisi bir otelde tanışıyorlar ve birbirlerine karşı farklı bir şey hissediyorlar. Sonra yolları ayrılıyor. Biri derin sulara diğeri acı dolu bir coğrafyaya gidiyor.

İkisinin birlikteykenki hikayesini ve ayrı ayrı hikayelerini okuyoruz. Tüm bunların aralarına bilim, din, tarih ve mitolojiye dair metinler serpiştirilmiş. Bu meti ...more

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Dec 24, 2015 Argos rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Oldukça karışık,kopuklukları olan bir anlatım, sadece konu güncel ve cazip, okunması zor.

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Apr 23, 2018 Maria Espadinha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A Fractal Mystery

I felt this story as a life and death sort of meeting, developed in two senses : metaphorically and philosophically.

Metaphorically through the flash love affair that happens between James and Danielle:

James was held in captivity by some al-Qaeda guys (the way I figure it out, the difference between such a situation and the death corridor doesn't seem quite substantial), while Danielle was a scientist (a sea explorer in contact with a myriad of living organisms) in a place pulsin A Fractal Mystery

I felt this story as a life and death sort of meeting, developed in two senses : metaphorically and philosophically.

Metaphorically through the flash love affair that happens between James and Danielle:

James was held in captivity by some al-Qaeda guys (the way I figure it out, the difference between such a situation and the death corridor doesn't seem quite substantial), while Danielle was a scientist (a sea explorer in contact with a myriad of living organisms) in a place pulsing with life...

Philosophically, in a sense that after death we all decompose and submerge to immerge again -- in a flower, a leaf, a tree branch, whatever...
Nothing really dies, it just turns into a new shape:

"We cannot talk with definition about our souls, but it is certain that we will decompose. Some dust of our bodies may end up in a horse, wasp, cockerel, frog, flower, or leaf, but for every one of these sensational assemblies there are a quintillion microorganisms. It is far likelier that the greater part of us will become protists than a skyscraping dormouse. What is likely is that, sooner or later, carried in the wind and in rivers, or your graveyard engulfed in the sea, a portion of each of us will be given new life in the cracks, vents, or pools of molten sulphur on which the tonguefish skate. You will be in Hades, the staying place of the spirits of the dead. You will be drowned in oblivion, the River Lethe, swallowing water to erase all memory. It will not be the nourishing womb you began your life in. It will be a submergence. You will take your place in the boiling-hot fissures, among the teeming hordes of nameless microorganisms that mimic no forms, because they are the foundation of all forms. In your reanimation you will be aware only that you are a fragment of what once was, and are no longer dead"

We are all part of an inscrutable whole in a continuous recycling process, where each of us is a tiny cell, in the same sense our cells are our micro components.

It's a fractal mysterious kind of universe, the one we live in! ...more

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Dec 25, 2012 Tim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-british-fiction, reviewed

While this is not 100% successful, it is a damn impressive book, and occasionally it is brilliant. Ledgard writes for the Economist, from Africa, and this novel, his second, is set in Somalia. The hero, James More (a descendant of Thomas More; now that's a lineage), is a British "water engineer" (i.e., spook), kidnapped by jihadists. The harrowing, vivid opening bit will convince you, not that it would take much convincing, mind, that you must never be kidnapped by al-Qaeda zealots under any cir While this is not 100% successful, it is a damn impressive book, and occasionally it is brilliant. Ledgard writes for the Economist, from Africa, and this novel, his second, is set in Somalia. The hero, James More (a descendant of Thomas More; now that's a lineage), is a British "water engineer" (i.e., spook), kidnapped by jihadists. The harrowing, vivid opening bit will convince you, not that it would take much convincing, mind, that you must never be kidnapped by al-Qaeda zealots under any circumstances. Ledgard provides a parallel story about More's love affair with a biomathematician, a woman named Danielle Flinders, whom he meets while on vacation in France, and her research into the "deep ocean" is an evocative (if at times labored) counterpoint to the plight of Mr. More.

What is never labored is his understanding of the jihadists. They are "empowered by the prospect of martyrdom"; they are fatalists in a positively medieval way. "[T]here was a question of what religion meant to a jihadist. There was no introspection, except what was needed to look into yourself and decide to die for a cause. There was detestation of science and an abhorrence of philosophy."

He humanizes a couple of them; a Dr. Aziz comes off as a true caregiver, and becomes somewhat fond of More--he hopes his prisoner will become a Muslim. But there is no ambiguity about their power for evil. Ledgard uses the story of a young girl in a Somalian town who is gang-raped and reports the crime. The local cleric tries her, finds her "guilty" of adultery, and sentences her to death by stoning. The scene in the novel, based on a real event, is one of the most gruesome and revolting things I have ever read--in some ways far more barbarous than what recently happened in Newtown, Connecticut:

"A biblical scene--no, a Koranic scene--the clerics, the men standing behind the pile of stones, the strange trees casting their shapes, the dust itself, the stones flying and missing. It was ancient, also new. The sermon that followed was played over loudspeakers in the town....There was a camera recording it for a website. They downloaded the video onto a phone and forced him [More] to watch. No matter how many times it was sped up or slowed down, no matter the cutaway or close-ups, there was no way to correct it: it was an injustice that could not be corrected. If you paused it, he thought, the stones would not stop in the air. If you muted it, the sound would continue." [nb: that is by far the least gruesome part of the description, but it shows you what kind of writer Ledgard is]

The book is beautiful, and unfailingly interesting; very literary, very polished. I'm not convinced the subplot, at least the part about Flinders's research on the deep ocean, "which challenges our sense of who we are and where we came from," is really well thought out--it feels like the author simply needed something to dilute the horror of More's predicament (it may be that he sees the primordial ocean as a harbinger of hope...or the possibility that we are fouling the one unexplored place on earth and are as careless and thoughtless as fundamentalists). But even these parts are compelling; Ledgard knows something of oceanography.

This is a great book.

...more

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Sep 02, 2013 Sitaphul rated it did not like it

Very disappointed, given the reviews I've read of this book. Makes me question the reviewing industry, in general. The love story at the center was deflated and pretentious. Even with my understanding that James was undergoing trauma in captivity, his sections read like imperial, anthropological journal entries, which, unfortunately, don't read as authorial strategy or characterization. The role of women (other than Danny) is exploitive and prop-like, and Danny herself feels incredibly undevelop ...more

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Jun 27, 2013 Katie rated it liked it

There simply wasn’t enough story or interaction between actual human beings in this novel for my taste. In a way it could have begun and ended anywhere, as it really did seem often to be a series of pieces - consisting of two deeply solitary narratives and a slew of scientific/historic observations of varied relevance - that were shuffled with occasional brilliance and sporadic logic.

That said, what Ledgard has done with dimension is wholly unique and deeply interesting. By exploring depth, sta ...more

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Feb 27, 2013 Eric rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Has a novel ever been more aptly titled than J. M. Ledgard's Submergence? From the opening pages, we're reminded relentlessly that "submergence," "submersion," "sinking," "diving," and "descent" are very much what this painstakingly crafted book is about. It's a thematic obsession that ties together philosophical synopses, historical anecdotes, essayistic meditations, two central characters, and three interwoven plots. Submergence is plainly a novel of grand ambitions—a brooding, atmospheric spy ...more

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May 01, 2013 Saptarshi rated it did not like it

Shelves: interesting-fiction

Stunningly orientalist. Simply amazed that not one of the reviews have even touched upon it. Ledgard seems like a very creepy old-school colonial guy - a slightly smarter Brit Tom Friedman-ish journalist at the neoliberal Economist - with a very dubious Islamophobic agenda. Will elaborate in a longer piece, but wow, what a knob.

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Jul 23, 2018 Mango rated it did not like it

ไมอินเลย 555
ไมรูสึกถึงความเชือมโยงของ 2 คนนีเลย โรแมนติกตรงไหน เหงาตรงไหน เสนเรืองของ 2 คนดูแยกกันชัดเจนมาก เหมือนคนเขียนไมรูจะผสานยังไง มันเลยกระทอนกระแทนแบบนีอะ ...more

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Jun 08, 2018 Joanne Freitas rated it liked it · review of another edition

Um livro que fala por um lado de amor e por outro de a vida de um cativeiro e todas as suas consequências. Este livro serve como reflexão sobre a vida e a morte.

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Apr 14, 2013 Charlie Quimby rated it it was amazing

On a recent vacation, I finished J.M. Ledgard's Submergence and pressed it on my very well-read wife. Her first word after finishing it was "Wow!"

She asked if she could pass it on to her sister and my first word was "No!"

Not because I'm usually selfish with my books, but because I want this book close by — under my pillow should I despair about the world; on the shelf should I think there's no sense trying to write serious fiction in this age of micro-reading; on my desk to remind me that big ol On a recent vacation, I finished J.M. Ledgard's Submergence and pressed it on my very well-read wife. Her first word after finishing it was "Wow!"

She asked if she could pass it on to her sister and my first word was "No!"

Not because I'm usually selfish with my books, but because I want this book close by — under my pillow should I despair about the world; on the shelf should I think there's no sense trying to write serious fiction in this age of micro-reading; on my desk to remind me that big old conundrums of existence still can be approached from fresh vantage points.

August is nearly finished and Submergence may be the best thing I will read this year.

The story is simple. A British spy is being held by Somalian jihadists who aren't quite sure what to do with him. As James More endures the insults and irrationality of his captivity (Brian Keenan's account of his ordeals in An Evil Cradling came to mind at times), he tries different strategies to hold himself together. His strength, his opportunities to escape and his will to survive are all dwindling, and it will be terribly inconvenient for the British Government to acknowledge him, let alone rescue him.

So he alternately engages with his captors as human beings, reflects on his lineage (he's a descendant of Thomas More and some other colorful characters), dredges what he can from a rather vague Anglican faith and mostly reaches back to a brief but intense interlude with Danielle — a Franco-Australian marine biologist who is preparing for a career-defining deep-sea dive to the farthest reaches of the ocean and perhaps to learn more about the origins of life on earth.

Both are immersed in their own situations and yet they find each other almost like two blind protozoans upon whose mingling everything else depends. James brings to their love affair man's coping strategies drawn from the past — of stories, culture, masculine lineage and God — while Danielle stands for how deep scientific understanding can also help us place ourselves in the cosmos.

His problems are very much bound up in questions of politics, tribal ignorance and the impracticality of those who insist upon simple ideological answers. Her portions of the book explore how chemical processes and the slow determinism of millennia can be the basis of a competing metaphysics at least as profound as the Godly versions so far invented.

I don't mean for this description to be too eggheady — it's a very readable 208 pages — but the novel will challenge your thinking, delight you with new perspectives and give you hope, despite suggesting that your individual life may also be insignificant.

Submergence is a remarkable book and I refuse to hand over my copy because Ledgard and Coffee House Press have earned your $15.95 and then some.
...more

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Mar 21, 2013 John Pappas rated it really liked it

"They arrived at a place no satellite image can do justice to," as we arrive in the barren world of Ledgard's Submergence, a book that feels so intensely of the global transnational geopolitical now. Like Delillo but without the paranoia, or with the paranoia replaced by both desperate hope and resignation, Ledgard's world is one of deception and fanaticism, of drones and terrorism, of collapsing nation-states and war lords, but also one of crystalline observations of the natural world -- a worl ...more

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Jan 20, 2016 Ariya marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Isn't particularly interested but hey, James McAvoy is being cast as the main character so, *sigh*

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Jul 27, 2013 Uwe Hook rated it it was amazing

My book of the year so far:

J.M . Ledgard's second novel is strange and disturbing It is also dark and, one might argue, deeply pessimistic in terms of the future it suggests for humankind.

SUBMERGENCE is an account of James, a kidnapped British spy, and the slow disintegration of his will and consciousness among his jihadist captors in Somalia, coupled with the descent into the depths of the oceans on the part of Danielle, a marine biomathematician.

Somewhere in there, in flashbacks, like particle ...more

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Dec 11, 2013 A rated it did not like it

Shelves: read-2014

Pretentious, ill-conceived, misogynistic, boring, flat, and insufferable. The author is a journalist who fancies himself a novelist but here's hoping for the salvation of any dignity the human race still has left that he really, really, REALLY doesn't quit his day job. I would not wish this paean to white male privilege on my worst enemy.

Please, I implore you, store this book in your bathroom cabinet as emergency backup when the TP runs out, and instead go pick up "A Day and A Night and a Day b ...more

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Jan 01, 2014 David Sasaki rated it really liked it

Shelves: kindle

I came to this book with unfairly inflated expectations, having read enthusiastic endorsements from writers I respect: Teju Cole, Kathryn Schulz, Alexis Madrigal, and Robin Sloan.

Those unfair expectations were met throughout the first half of the book, but the second half was a slow let-down

The strength of the book's beginning lies in its juxtaposition between two scenes that unravel with cinematic allure. First we meet James More, a British spy posing as a water engineer who has been taken hos ...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Ellen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: recensies

Op de laatste pagina van Tot het laatste vuur de diepzee bereikt roept J.M. Ledgard op om Denis Allex, een in juli 2009 door Al Shabaab ontvoerde Franse veiligheidsadviseur, niet te vergeten. Net zomin als Asho Duhulow, een meisje dat op 13-jarige leeftijd in Kismayo schuldig werd bevonden aan ontrouw omdat ze verkracht was. Haar straf was dood door steniging. De kans dat je beiden vergeet, nadat je Tot het laatste vuur de diepzee bereikt hebt gelezen, is nihil.

James More, de mannelijke hoofdper Op de laatste pagina van Tot het laatste vuur de diepzee bereikt roept J.M. Ledgard op om Denis Allex, een in juli 2009 door Al Shabaab ontvoerde Franse veiligheidsadviseur, niet te vergeten. Net zomin als Asho Duhulow, een meisje dat op 13-jarige leeftijd in Kismayo schuldig werd bevonden aan ontrouw omdat ze verkracht was. Haar straf was dood door steniging. De kans dat je beiden vergeet, nadat je Tot het laatste vuur de diepzee bereikt hebt gelezen, is nihil.

James More, de mannelijke hoofdpersoon in het verhaal, wordt net als Allex ontvoerd door leden van Al Shabaab. Na hem eerst lange tijd te hebben opgesloten, nemen ze hem mee naar een trainingskamp voor Al Qaida martelaren. Onderweg naar het kamp brengen ze o.a. enige tijd door in Kismayo, waar James getuige is van de terechtstelling van een 13-jarig meisje. Hij houdt zich, ondanks dit soort gebeurtenissen, de mishandelingen en ontberingen, min of meer staande door in gedachten terug te keren naar zijn ontmoeting met Danielle Flinders.
Danielle is een biomathematicus, die zich bezighoudt met het onderzoeken van organismen die op grote diepte leven in de Atlantische oceaan. Zij brengt elk jaar de kerstdagen door aan de Franse kust, in een hotel met de toepasselijke naam, Atlantic. Het is daar dat Danielle en James elkaar ontmoeten. Het zijn maar drie dagen die ze met elkaar doorbrengen, maar de impact daarvan op elkaars leven is blijvend. Beiden keren naderhand keer op keer terug naar die ontmoeting en putten er kracht uit. Uit de uitgewisselde verhalen, uit hun samenzijn, uit hun liefde voor elkaar en voor het leven.

Zo samengevat wordt wellicht de indruk gewekt dat Ledgard een goedkope, op de emoties inspelende 'waargebeurdroman' heeft afgeleverd, maar niets is minder waar. Ledgards bijna feitelijke manier van vertellen en de wijze waarop het verhaal is vormgegeven voorkomen dat. Dat Ledgard verschillende vertelperspectieven hanteert waarin afwisselend James, onderweg naar het martelarenkamp, en Danielle, onderweg naar de diepzee, worden gevolgd is niet zo bijzonder. Ook het gebruik van flash backs is dat niet. Wel bijzonder zijn de korte hoofdstukken tussendoor met uitleg of overpeinzingen over allerlei onderwerpen. Onderwerpen zo divers als de gevolgen van extreme kou, de capaciteit van een petaflopcomputer of de dood. Zo'n opzet loopt het gevaar gekunsteld over te komen, maar dat heeft Ledgard knap weten te vermijden. Hij slaagt erin om een bijna prozaïsch verteld verhaal, aangevuld met schijnbaar willekeurige 'ditjes en datjes', te laten resulteren in een schitterende roman over leven en overleven. En over de verscheidenheid daarvan. Waar de ene levensvorm aan de oppervlakte overleeft door kracht te putten uit Ziggy Stardust, overleeft een andere door in de diepste diepten van de diepzee duizenden jaren te wachten op de juiste omstandigheden. Tot het laatste vuur de diepzee bereikt is daarmee ook een roman over hoop en over geloof. Hoop op overleven en geloof in het leven, waar dan ook, hoe dan ook:

"Gedichten spreken over de oceaan als een graftombe, terwijl de wetenschap hem als een baarmoeder beschouwt. Als je dan toch moet wegteren of een gewelddadige dood moet sterven in het ochtendlicht, dan zou een zeemansgraf die onverenigbare visies kunnen opheffen. Wikkel me in een hangmat en laat me afzinken naar de diepte ... Zou jij begraven willen worden, of word je liever in een vadem afgezonken, naar een rif waar je zacht deint tot je botten van koraal zijn en je de zee ziet veranderen in iets rijks en vreemds?"

Prima vertaald uit het Engels door Ine Willems. ...more

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Nov 29, 2013 Jason McKinney rated it it was ok

Huh... First off, I was disappointed in light of the stellar reviews that I had read. It has two somewhat compelling characters who through a chance encounter, meet and fall in love at Christmas time while staying at a rural French hotel created by Cesar Ritz at the start of the 20th century. This cozy, romantic plotline is thrown in a blender with jarring accounts of jihadists taking a British spy captive and scientific digressions on how significant the undersea world is and how people refuse ...more

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Jan 01, 2015 Harold Smithson (Suicide punishable by Death) rated it did not like it

The more I read modern “high brow” literature the more convinced I am that nobody has actually read any classics. People talk about Moby Dick being one of the greatest novels in the English language (Ledgard himself praises Moby Dick in Submergence during one of many unnecessary deviations from the story) but peoples’ idea of what the book is differs greatly from the reality. Nobody ever mentions that Herman Melville wrote a funny scene where one sailor forces another to apologize to a couple sh ...more

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Jul 01, 2014 Nick Black rated it really liked it

Recommended to Nick by: someone in slate

Shelves: likely-reread, read-in-nyc

Pretty good! People who talk about "long passages of technical detail" either read a different book, or have a morbid fear of the scientific argot without which it is simply impossible to tell a detailed story about engineers and researchers. a quote from the text is relevant:

"She had suffered from the divide in the English education system, which holds that scientists do not study Milton, and those who love Milton have no comprehension of Newton's gravity, which brought Lucifer tumbling down fr ...more

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Dec 15, 2013 Ryan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, science, read-in-2014, favorites

Ledgard possesses and utilizes powerful, immense pools of delicious nouns to describe the natural scenes involved in Danny and More's adventures.

I loved this book for its math and science snippets. While Ledgard effortlessly sits the reader inside the conscious of James More, he only views Danny from the exterior, among her colleagues. In descriptions and snippets around Danny's work I was particularly hooked by Danny's mythical inspiration:

“Six millennia ago, the air god Enlil and the sea god E Ledgard possesses and utilizes powerful, immense pools of delicious nouns to describe the natural scenes involved in Danny and More's adventures.

I loved this book for its math and science snippets. While Ledgard effortlessly sits the reader inside the conscious of James More, he only views Danny from the exterior, among her colleagues. In descriptions and snippets around Danny's work I was particularly hooked by Danny's mythical inspiration:

“Six millennia ago, the air god Enlil and the sea god Enki settled themselves in the pantheon of Sumerian deities. The Sumerians believed the world was something like a snow globe. Enlil kept the air in the world together with lil, a mingling atmosphere that also lent luminosity to the sun and stars embellished on the inside of the snow globe. Behind the firmament was a deep sea, and Enki’s house was on the sea floor—a place called Abzu. It was a house made of colors that could not be seen, tiles of lapis lazuli, and encrustations of gems, most especially ruby and cornelian, that could not be crushed at those depths. The bowed cedar doors were hammered right with gold no brine could corrode. In this house Enki created a man. He mixed clay over the volcanic furnace, shaped it with heavy water, and swam it to the world. He breathed air into it there. The man failed. His body was weak. So was his spirit. According to the translation of Samuel Kramer of the University of Pennsylvania, the man was offered a piece of bread: “He does not reach out for it. He can neither sit nor stand nor bend his knees.” What is the lesson? That a man-creature created in the deep should stay there: in a house without light, without a hearth.”

Danny has named one of the most important discoveries in her field after Enki. The parallels and metaphors all center on the depths of the ocean and often the deepest spots in the biosphere, the Hadal deep.

While More is hallucinatory and traveling with his captors, questions of life, death, memory, self, and animation occur. Ledgard questions which among these we have power over, and details the ways in which we may very well be overwhelmingly mundane and forgettable as a species.. as individuals.

“It is understandable you would want to come back as yourself into a wonderland with the sharpness of color of the Queen of Hearts in a newly opened pack of cards. But coming back as yourself is resurrection. It is uncommon. It may even be greater than the scope of mathematics. We cannot talk with definition about our souls, but it is certain that we will decompose. Some dust of our bodies may end up in a horse, wasp, cockerel, frog, flower, or leaf, but for every one of these sensational assemblies there are a quintillion microorganisms. It is far likelier that the greater part of us will become protists than a skyscraping dormouse. What is likely is that, sooner or later, carried in the wind and in rivers, or your graveyard engulfed in the sea, a portion of each of us will be given new life in the cracks, vents, or pools of molten sulphur on which the tonguefish skate. You will be in Hades, the staying place of the spirits of the dead. You will be drowned in oblivion, the River Lethe, swallowing water to erase all memory. It will not be the nourishing womb you began your life in. It will be a submergence. You will take your place in the boiling-hot fissures, among the teeming hordes of nameless microorganisms that mimic no forms, because they are the foundation of all forms. In your reanimation you will be aware only that you are a fragment of what once was, and are no longer dead. Sometimes this will be an electric feeling, sometimes a sensation of the acid you eat, or the furnace under you. You will burgle and rape other cells in the dark for a seeming eternity, but nothing will come of it. Hades is evolved to the highest state of simplicity. It is stable. Whereas you are a tottering tower, so young in evolutionary terms, and addicted to consciousness.”

I gave it 5/5. Fell in love with this book in swoops. ...more

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Oct 31, 2013 Mark rated it really liked it

Shelves: community-bookstore-book-club

This is a helluva book.

If you want to know what happened in a war, you might read a history book or old news reports. But if you want to know what it was like, you go to books, movies, story.

We're at war, now. But there aren't a lot of stories about it and the news always feels at an arms length.

The war between The West and Islamist Terrorists seems either very distant (drone attack in Yemen) or very immediate (Sep 11, July 7). Other than Usama bin Laden or Khalid Sheik Mohammed, how many peopl ...more

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May 26, 2018 Fabi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Este livro revelou ser totalmente o contrário daquilo que esperava! Gostei, apesar de acreditar que não seja um livro que agrade a todos!

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Jun 06, 2016 Mehmet rated it liked it · review of another edition

Hem çok güzel hem de netameli bir kitap.

İlk başta tekniğini yadırgadım ve başlarda sıkıldım elbette, ne de olsa okurluk tarihinde kimi zaman kırılmalara uğrasa da Cervantes'ten bu yana alışkın olduğumuz bir yapı var zihnimizde. "Batır Gitsin Derin Sulara" ise bu yapıya uygun bir eser değil. Rahatlıkla didaktik olmakla eleştirilebilir. Aslında tam da bu nedenle çok heyecan verici bir kitap. Birkaç sayfadan sonra ne olacağını merak edip ilgiyle okumaya başladım ve yeni şeyler öğrenmeye alıştım.

Bu ...more

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