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Young Mariner
Young Mariner is a coming of age novel circa 1966. The protagonist, William Connolly is a street smart kid from South Boston evincing the intense naivete of Mitch McDeere in The Firm by John Grisham albeit in a waterfront setting.A recent graduate of Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Connolly is starting his first job as Third Mate on the cargo ship, MorMacPride. He wants to make the Merchant Marine his career, but sails into seagoing larceny as he discovers a captain and crew involved in smuggling drugs, guns and explosives.The story follows the ship's travels from New York City into U. S. East coast ports down through the East Coast of South America, racing through the Great Lakes ending in Brooklyn, NY in an unusual and violent way.Young Mariner is the first of a trilogy following the exploits of Connolly. The second takes place in south and east Africa and the third explores the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.
199 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 5, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 8, 2020
Enjoyed the story and all the details a mariner must work through.
February 26, 2021
"Young Mariner," which I picked up (along with vols. #2 and #3,) on the advice of a friend, is a strange novel. It reads more like a travel journal or ship's log rather than a plot-driven novel, so it's very lacking in thematic content, a little toward the "journalism" side of the romanticism/naturalism spectrum in literature.
It chronicles the first sea voyage of a 21-year-old newbie merchant marine sailor from America's east coast down to South America and back, then down the St. Lawrence Seaway through the Great Lakes and back. That's really the main "plot" of the book - with a subplot of sorts involving some mysterious goings-on among some of the crew.
The book is a little topheavy on the details of shipboard processes and practices, but given Curran's background it lends a solid authenticity to the story, and the initial barrage of technical detail is something you get used to and becomes more welcome after the first few chapters.
The temporal setting of the mid-1960s is an unusual but interesting choice, and the story is never slow or dull.
Where I fault the book is its lack of theme - there is no real "moral to the story," or overarching theme that drives the action, but rather just "this happened, then this, then this, then this, the end." It needs more engaging drama and classic moral choices as pivot points in a plot. Another thing I thought was odd was the inconsistency in action, first evident when the voyage arrived at Montevideo and Buenos Aires, and particularly during the jaunt up the St. Lawrence through the Great Lakes and back.
In ports-of call along the eastern seaboard of the US there is interesting detail (including a fairly explicit sex scene, so be forewarned if you're put off by that kind of thing,) but after the stop in Rio, the rest of the journey all the way back to Savannah is only vague comments-in-passing, "We went here and dropped this off, then navigated the waterway to here, then went back to sea," etc. The whole trip through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes is given vague, cursory treatment - nothing of import really happens through that entire leg of the journey. When an author takes you somewhere you're naturally expecting something important to happen there, but that whole segment of the story, while moderately interesting, was superfluous except for some nuts-and-bolts navigation detail. As a reader I was left wanting a little more meat on the bone.
And that's a good overall appraisal of the book: It needed more depth - an engaging plot/theme that gives the story purpose and pulls the reader in. As it stands the book is, again, more journalistic than projecting of intriguing plots and themes that drive the action. All the same, it's totally unique in its subject matter - life aboard a merchant marine vessel is something rarely touched in fiction - and is interesting and entertaining enough to be a good investment of time. I'm looking forward to the next two books - but I'm hoping they have more of the depth I'm looking for.
[On a technical note, on the Kindle version all of the chapter titles are missing characters - "IGH W CH" instead of "NIGHT WATCH," "B E OS IRES" instead of "BUENOS AIRES," "HE CI" instead of "THE CITY," etc. - so this book is in need of a title formatting fix. (In looking through book #2, "On to Africa" this problem is not repeated there, so apparently it's only a problem with book #1.)]
It chronicles the first sea voyage of a 21-year-old newbie merchant marine sailor from America's east coast down to South America and back, then down the St. Lawrence Seaway through the Great Lakes and back. That's really the main "plot" of the book - with a subplot of sorts involving some mysterious goings-on among some of the crew.
The book is a little topheavy on the details of shipboard processes and practices, but given Curran's background it lends a solid authenticity to the story, and the initial barrage of technical detail is something you get used to and becomes more welcome after the first few chapters.
The temporal setting of the mid-1960s is an unusual but interesting choice, and the story is never slow or dull.
Where I fault the book is its lack of theme - there is no real "moral to the story," or overarching theme that drives the action, but rather just "this happened, then this, then this, then this, the end." It needs more engaging drama and classic moral choices as pivot points in a plot. Another thing I thought was odd was the inconsistency in action, first evident when the voyage arrived at Montevideo and Buenos Aires, and particularly during the jaunt up the St. Lawrence through the Great Lakes and back.
In ports-of call along the eastern seaboard of the US there is interesting detail (including a fairly explicit sex scene, so be forewarned if you're put off by that kind of thing,) but after the stop in Rio, the rest of the journey all the way back to Savannah is only vague comments-in-passing, "We went here and dropped this off, then navigated the waterway to here, then went back to sea," etc. The whole trip through the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes is given vague, cursory treatment - nothing of import really happens through that entire leg of the journey. When an author takes you somewhere you're naturally expecting something important to happen there, but that whole segment of the story, while moderately interesting, was superfluous except for some nuts-and-bolts navigation detail. As a reader I was left wanting a little more meat on the bone.
And that's a good overall appraisal of the book: It needed more depth - an engaging plot/theme that gives the story purpose and pulls the reader in. As it stands the book is, again, more journalistic than projecting of intriguing plots and themes that drive the action. All the same, it's totally unique in its subject matter - life aboard a merchant marine vessel is something rarely touched in fiction - and is interesting and entertaining enough to be a good investment of time. I'm looking forward to the next two books - but I'm hoping they have more of the depth I'm looking for.
[On a technical note, on the Kindle version all of the chapter titles are missing characters - "IGH W CH" instead of "NIGHT WATCH," "B E OS IRES" instead of "BUENOS AIRES," "HE CI" instead of "THE CITY," etc. - so this book is in need of a title formatting fix. (In looking through book #2, "On to Africa" this problem is not repeated there, so apparently it's only a problem with book #1.)]
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews