Wilson! Where Are You????

 

TITLE: Whalefall

AUTHOR: Daniel Kraus

PUBLISHER: MTV Books

PUBLISHING DATE: August 8, 2023

PAGES: 327   

SOURCE: Own

FROM GOODREADS: Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year. 

The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.

MY THOUGHTS: The more time that lapses since I've finished this book, I have started appreciating it a little more.  However, it still kind of fell flat for me but maybe my expectations were just a bit too high.

Jay Gardinar grew up with his father, a famous diver (more folklore famous but still well-respected), his two sisters and his mother.  His father Mitt struggled to maintain jobs due to his mean as a snake attitude and his drinking. In addition, since Jay was the only son, Mitt was especially critical of him and forced him to participate in diving at an early age.  Something happens which causes Jay to move out at age 15, never to return, even when his father is diagnosed with a terminal illness.  Now Mitt has died, and Jay fells the only way to salvage any relationship with his remaining family is to dive down and find his father's remains.

Jay tells no one about his plans and sneaks off early one morning for a dive in the area where his father committed suicide.  He realizes his diving skills may have gotten a bit rusty about the same times he gets tangled up with an octopus and ends up being swallowed by a humpback whale. Jay is quickly losing oxygen but he keeps trying to figure a way out alive as he passes through the whale's four stomachs.  Can he make it in time and is he really can he rely on lessons learned from a father he abandoned to save his life.

I will give the author several credits where credit is due. He definitely was very familiar with the scientific aspects of this book including diving equipment, diving experiences and marine life.  Also, I loved the formatting of the book.  The reader is taken along on flashbacks Jay is having while struggling to get out of the whale which tells exactly what happened to Jay, his father and his family.  Also, the real-time chapters were headed with the amount of oxygen Jay had left before he suffocated inside the whale.  This definitely amped up the tension.  However, I also had a few issues.

I actually felt worse for the whale than I did Jay.  Jay was on his turf and the whale didn't swallow him out of viciousness.  Jay was forced to do some pretty abusive acts inside the whale in order to be released and while I could understand that I still felt badly for the whale. Jay had a horrible childhood, and I believed that his mother and sisters basically sacrificed him as a youth so that Mitt would leave them alone.  Plus, being women, Mitt could care less what they were doing anyway.  

I recently heard this is being made into a movie and I can see it really being a hit.  I'll probably watch it but again, I'm sure I'll feel badly for the whale.  Oh, and if you're wondering about the Wilson reference.  While inside the whale, Jay becomes dependent on something he finds which he starts calling "Beaky."  At a point when Beaky slips out of his grasp, he becomes highly distressed and all I could envision in Tom Hanks and the darn volleyball on "Castaway."  After that, I had a hard time seeing anything else.  

MY RATING: 3 PAWS