Helpful Score: 2
Interesting Book!! A good blend of Recent and age of exploration history. Fiction based on facts.
This debut novel won two Australian literary awards. The plot twists around a murder mystery, romance, history and myth. An archaeologist searching sand dunes for an ancient Portuguese ship discovers the body of a soldier from the 1940's. A local hermit, near death, seems to know more than he's willing to tell about the identify of the dead soldier and the ship's whereabouts. David, and his ex-girlfriend move in to the hermit's shack to care for the dying man with the hope he will share some valuable information about the missing, ancient ship. 16th century Spanish-Portuguese history, mapmaking, a war-time romance turned mystery, and archaeology makes this a somewhat complex story.
Nominated for Australia's Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best First Book.
David Norfolk, an archaeologist searching for a sixteenth-century Portuguese ship, long rumored to be buried beneath sand dunes of southern Australia, unearths instead the body of a man apparently murdered fifty years ago. Nearing the end of his funding and absolutely desperate to find the ship, David hears about a decrepit old man named Kurt Seligman, who lies dying in a shack near the excavation site. Hoping by some chance that Seligman may know something about the location of the Portuguese ship and perhaps even about the identity of the dead man, David begins a conversation that yields a strange and impassioned tale, a cryptic confession of obsessive love and betrayal in the 1930s and '40s. Sensuous, erudite, and framed by sixteenth- and eighteenth-century maritime history and myth, Wrack spins a web of lies, sex, and regret that is as unusual as it is beautiful.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Very interesting book filled with mystery, history, and romance. Bradley even makes Renaissance mapmaking facinating. It was a bit drawn out on some places, but otherwise a very nice read.
David Norfolk, an archaeologist searching for a sixteenth-century Portuguese ship, long rumored to be buried beneath sand dunes of southern Australia, unearths instead the body of a man apparently murdered fifty years ago. Nearing the end of his funding and absolutely desperate to find the ship, David hears about a decrepit old man named Kurt Seligman, who lies dying in a shack near the excavation site. Hoping by some chance that Seligman may know something about the location of the Portuguese ship and perhaps even about the identity of the dead man, David begins a conversation that yields a strange and impassioned tale, a cryptic confession of obsessive love and betrayal in the 1930s and '40s. Sensuous, erudite, and framed by sixteenth- and eighteenth-century maritime history and myth, Wrack spins a web of lies, sex, and regret that is as unusual as it is beautiful.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Very interesting book filled with mystery, history, and romance. Bradley even makes Renaissance mapmaking facinating. It was a bit drawn out on some places, but otherwise a very nice read.