Randy Baker, Half Fast ****

Half Fast is an unusual cruising memoir in that it features comparatively few sailing adventures. The first chapters deal with onshore tribulations: riding out Hurricane Andrew anchored in the Bahamas, repairing the damage when their boat is blown ashore, tracking down outboard motor thieves in Honduras, working for a season in the Virgin Islands, refitting for more than a year in Trinidad. Even the on-water stories are harrowing: rescuing smugglers in Saint Vincent, dealing with an aggressive sea lion, nearly getting run down by a Chinese fishing vessel. The book ends with their boat nearly destroyed in a tsunami. Where's the poetry about the call of the sea and the freedom of the cruising lifestyle?

I would say the target audience for Half Fast is fellow sailors rather than people dreaming about sailing the world. Baker's stories are exactly the kind you would share with crew mates out on the water. 

In the final third of the book, Baker and his wife sail through the Panama Canal and cross to the South Pacific. This section features more typical content about life on board and the remote exotic places they visit.

The title, by the way, is a pun.

Andrew Miller, The Land in Winter *** 1/2

This novel features two couples living in the West Country of England in the winter of 1962/3. The Big Freeze forces them to confront their insecurities and dissatisfaction.

The writing style and subject matter make it read like a book written in the 1960s rather than a work of historical fiction published in 2024. It seems like a British variant of an Updike or Cheever novel, addressing the discontents of the suburban class.

Yoko Tawada, Exophony ***

The word exophony refers to the experience of "existing outside of one's mother tongue." Tawada is a Japanese writer who lives in Germany and writes many of her books in German. In this collection of essays, she celebrates exophony as a source of creative inspiration. Non-native speakers notice aspects of a language that native speakers are blind to.

My experience reading Tawada's non-fiction was similar to my experience reading her fiction. She offers interesting observations, but they don't add up to larger points. 

Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore ***

Wild Dark Shore has an awesome setting: a mostly abandoned research station on a tiny island between Australia and Antarctica. The only human inhabitants are a man and his three children, left behind as caretakers when the scientists left due to encroaching climate change. Until, that is, a mysterious woman washes ashore.

McConaghy offers fantastic descriptions of the island, its abundant wildlife, its challenging weather, and its isolation. The characters, though, are unbelievable. Every one of them acts strangely due to traumatic secrets that will be revealed in due course. McConaghy exacerbates the believability problem by having characters narrate chapters in the first person; it makes their withholding of secrets more clearly a pure plot device.

The plot gets increasingly melodramatic as all secrets are revealed. The incongruous appearance of a copy of Jane Eyre forecasts one of the twists.

Wild Dark Shore is a thriller dressed in the clothes of a literary novel. Character's personalities follow from the demands of the outlandish plot rather than driving the action. I give McConaghy credit for exploring various emotional responses to climate change, but I was never able to accept the characters as real people.