3 out of 4 stars
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The Mathematician's Journey by Anthony Dalton follows the journeys and adventures of Thomas Woodhouse, a student of mathematics and would-be student of navigation, who set sail with Captain Henry Hudson, in 1610, on a voyage that was yet another attempt to find the north-west passage. There are several maps at the front of the book, which you may find helpful, even if you already know the relevant geography.
If you know your history, you will perhaps have already realised that this was Hudson's last voyage. It ended in a mutiny, and only a few stragglers returned on board the ship, Discovery in 1611. Thomas was not one of them. He is generally believed to have shared the grim fate of Hudson and his son, but this story is based on the notion that he somehow survived and was taken to live with a native tribe, the Omushkegowak.
You may think I'm giving away too many spoilers here, but, aside from the fact that some of this is a matter of historical record, the book itself gives away a few spoilers at the start. First of all, one of the 'Advance Praise' reviews quoted in the preliminaries talks about Thomas returning “to his family in the New World” at the end of the book. Following that, at the very start of his account, Thomas himself, our first-person narrator, now back in London in the year 1639, tells us about the many friends he has left behind, and the fact that he particularly misses his wife and son.
Before I go any further, let me say that this really is a good book. I don't usually like to put the rating too early in a review, but here it is: I give this a rating of 3 out of 4 stars. There. I have to say this now, because what comes next is going to sound a bit harsh.
The spoilers at the start are, I suppose, a calculated choice on the author's part. That's a misjudgement, in my view; others may differ. Sadly, though, it is by no means the biggest problem the reader encounters at the start of the book. The first few chapters are really pretty mediocre. Another of the reviewers mentioned above talks about the story being well-researched. Well, I would say the bit in England has been researched quite carefully, but not, alas, with sufficient thoroughness. However much he knows about ships and sailing, everyday land-based seventeenth-century English life is clearly not the author's strong suit. He appears to have confused the courtship rituals, in particular, with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and as for the dialogue … well, no, let's just not go there. Furthermore, the research that has been done is not worn lightly. Our narrator feels the need to tell us what fashionable gentlemen typically wore during his boyhood; he also tells us about the gunpowder plot, gives us a quick history of Oxford University and recounts a visit to Stonehenge and Avebury. All that (well, OK, most of it) was accurate enough, but it was plodding and dull – and, more importantly, not in any way relevant.
However, things start to pick up pretty rapidly when Henry Hudson comes on the scene, and once we are on board ship, we are, almost literally, in a different world. The narrative becomes vivid, exciting and at times even poetic, but also displays a masterly grasp of technical and historic detail. Dalton's undoubted expertise here is worn very lightly – it informs the narrative, but does not weigh it down. Although I would say that character depictions aren't a strong point, the narrative has enough muscle to carry everything along beautifully. Once we get back to England we are again on dodgy ground, but happily not for long, and the book's Epilogue makes a fitting ending to what has been a lively and entertaining story.
This book would appeal to a wide variety of readers. It barely touches on Mathematics – you certainly don't need to know anything at all about Mathematics to understand or appreciate it. The text has been professionally edited; all in all, I spotted less than a handful of errors, and the quality of the writing is, at times, beautiful:
I rest my case. If you are fan of historical fiction, I'm confident you will enjoy this book, and it may also be enjoyed by people with an interest in the geography and history of North America or in the seventeenth-century voyages of discovery.“Shrouded as she was in winter’s cold blanket, from a distance the ship began to look more and more like a ghostly sculpture from nature’s infinite repertoire of exotic designs.”
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The Mathematician's Journey
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