Night Ship

I read a lot, but even so, my shelves are filled with treasures yet to be discovered. A much needed break from screen time was needed this week so I forwent my e-library for my actual library. I have a small section of what I’ve entitled “feminist-esque fiction,” and pulled this little book down. It’s a find I either picked up at one of the big book sales I sorely miss attending or a neighbor’s garage sale, I can’t remember. However, I didn’t know that I’d be embarking on a journey to “the place of lesbian desire” as described in the preface or I would have read this sooner. The book I am talking about is probably one you’ve never heard of as any indication by its online presence, but I do hope that this review garners some interest in Night Ship: A Voyage of Discovery by Mattie McClane.

I have no idea how Night Ship ended up on the shelf of a lesbian book blogger, but it feels a lot like fate. This story was intriguing to say the least. I devoured it in only a couple of hours, and when I fell asleep last night I half expected the story to continue in my own dreams. The plot is not one I can lay out simply, as there are six different stories that continue into one. Each chapter covers a character in the book, giving just enough detail about their actual lives so that you understand their behavior in the shared dream they experience together. Six different women, Galveo, Sella, Mahajan, Nic, Melody, and Trinket, who don’t know each other all share a common dream aboard a fifteenth century sailing ship.

In many ways Night Ship provided the same feeling I get when ingesting a perfectly executed short story. The small window into each character’s life in the beginning of the chapters was telling just enough so that by the end of the dream I felt like I consumed a full novel despite it being cut in six different narratives. Each character was well developed and interesting. Galveo, whose day life gave me serious To The Lighthouse vibes, is a writer but in the dream she is captain of the Night Ship. Sella is the person all the other characters don’t like or trust besides Galveo. She is the navigator on the ship and wants to be the one closest to Galveo. Mahajan is an immigrant from India who feels like an outsider in America and that feeling carries over when on the Night Ship. Nic is an overworked newspaper editor who is the ship’s mechanic set on keeping Galveo and Stella apart. Melody is an aspiring singer, but on the Night Ship she is the wise scribe. Trinket is a kooky owner of a junk shop who acts as the ship’s supply keeper.

The writing in this book had poetic quality in that the imagery was fluent, but also the narrative was to the point. Which is why I think so much story could be achieved in 146 short pages (the book is literally quite small). When on the Night Ship it very much felt like a dream. A character would be in one place on the ship and then another, sometimes joined by other characters. I got used to the flow pretty quickly and enjoyed the ride.

Truthfully, I try to let a book breathe in my brain for at least a few days after reading before writing a review, but Night Ship is just so different, I wanted to start talking about it immediately. If anyone out there has read it and would like to discuss, please reach out.  If you haven’t read Night Ship, I encourage you to give it a try. There’s love, deception, adventure – all the makings of a great story in such a small book. It only seems to be available via paperback through Amazon, Ebay, and Barnes and Noble. If you feel like this is a story you must read and those avenues aren’t available to you, I could be persuaded to send out my copy.