Publisher Description
The gripping story of a dramatic eighteenth-century voyage of discovery
In her wildly inventive debut novel, Naomi Williams reimagines the historical La Pérouse expedition, a voyage of exploration that left Brest in 1785 with two frigates, two hundred men, and overblown Enlightenment ideals and expectations, in a brave attempt to circumnavigate the globe for science and the glory of France.
Deeply grounded in historical fact but refracted through a powerful imagination, Landfalls follows the exploits and heartbreaks not only of the men on the ships but also of the people affected by the voyage—natives and other Europeans the explorers encountered, loved ones left waiting at home, and those who survived and remembered the expedition later. Each chapter is told from a different point of view and is set in a different part of the world—ranging from London to Alaska, from remote South Pacific islands to Siberia, and eventually back to France. The result is a beautifully written and absorbing tale of the high seas, scientific exploration, human tragedy, and the world on the cusp of the modern era.
By turns elegiac, profound, and comic, Landfalls reinvents the maritime adventure novel for the twenty-first century.
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“An ingenious encounter with the past and another demonstration of how far the historical novel has advanced from the tableaus, puppet shows, and costume dramas of yore…This is just one instance of Williams’s subtle genius for taking advantage of history’s generosity with motif…Williams shows admirable faith in her readers’ intelligence by not spelling things out and allowing us the exhilarating pleasure of extracting for ourselves the actual story being told. Her restraint and cunning in this regard, as well as her lively characters, sharp wit, and evocation of eighteenth-century optimism—that ‘basic faith in the goodness and rightness of life and the world’—make this debut a real surprise and a triumph.”
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Barnes & Noble, editorial review
