Whalefall

A Novel

De: Daniel Kraus

Narrado por: Kirby Heyborne

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Book Riot, Shelf Awareness, and NPR

The Martian meets 127 Hours in this “astoundingly great” (Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.

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.

Suspenseful and cinematic, Whalefall is an “powerfully humane” (Owen King, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about a young man who has given up on life…only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places.

©2023 Daniel Kraus (P)2023 Simon & Schuster Audio

This is not an action story!

This is a haunting story about death, mourning, and family and it's devastatingly beautiful. Best story of the year for me, so far, and one of my top 10 of all time. The comparison to The Martin sets you up for an optimistic and fun story of survival and that's just not what this is. You'll find yourself fighting tears more than biting your nails.

Some folks didn't like the narrator but I thought Kirby was excellent and I look forward to experiencing more that he's done. Additionally, some people found the flashbacks to bring a weird rhythm, but the pacing and structure made me think of Arrival by Ted Chiang.

Overall, I'm sad I can only experience this for the first time once. Great read.

Not what it’s billed as

There’s nothing wrong with the production of this. Kirby Heyborne did a great job with what he had to work with, but this is not really a thriller, or a horror novel. It’s kind of a story about grief and forgiveness, but that is marred by the fact that it also perpetuates a tired cliche about how your abusive parent wasn’t Really That Bad and You Should Forgive Them.

If you’ve had to cut a parent or other relative out of your life, this book is likely to be incredibly frustrating.

Aside from that, there’s just not enough meat on the bone to make this a full length story. The actual diving and eaten-by-whale parts are just not given enough meaningful page time to provide a sense of urgency to things, especially with the constant flashbacks that completely derail narrative tension.

Mind bending adventure

This was an adventure into a world few of us have experienced. Totally grabs the reader and inserts them into another world and dimension. The possibility of escape keeps you on your toes!

Slow start but it gets better

I read this with my a book club. I thought it took to get to the inciting incident.

what a great book!

there's so much detail in this book, and it morphs grnres multiple times. I loved it!

Surprising Depth (pun intended)

I expected a relatively superficial survival story, and I was impressed by the depth that Whalefall managed to achieve. This is a story about survival and escaping trauma. The metaphor of every moment Jay goes through connects brilliantly to his past, a tale weaved with such care that you imagine if this is really all happening or if this is Jay’s imagined experiences as he struggles to escape his past. The weaving of all life, land, and sea is beautiful. A well- researched story and brilliantly performed, I enjoyed this farm more than I thought I would.

Thalassophobia & Claustrophobia’s Meet Cute

Trigger Warning: This book will fuel your thalassophobic and claustrophobic nightmares simultaneously.

Take the impossible survival situation found within Andy Weir’s “The Martian” combined with the cloying, pressing horror of the alien digestion scene from Jordan Peele’s “Nope” - and place it under our terrestrial Pacific Ocean, tangled in the depth-probing hunting tentacles of a giant squid, within the acrid digestive gases of a sperm whale’s first of four stomachs. This is only the beginning of “Whalefall”.

A book concerning grief and the tribulations of its eventual acceptance, our own infinitesimal mortality, our lifelong familial correspondence and inevitable merging with all the beauty contained within the natural world, and a son’s relationship to his difficult and distant recently deceased father.

I absolutely loved this book. Props to Eva Anderson for discussing it in passing on The Doughboys Podcast. A podcast not even about books, but about chain restaurants.

Having lost my father at a young age, I found the book’s dissection of grief difficult at times, but ultimately rewarding and emotionally cathartic.

If you’re looking for a quick and horrifying read that will instill new or reinforce old fears and respect for the ocean, read “Whalefall”.

Not like anything I’ve ever read before

This book really took me by surprise. I thought it was maybe going to be a claustrophobic gross-out read - I was curious, but not in a hurry. After getting it for Christmas, I just meant to peek at the first few pages, and then I was just going to finish the first chapter, and the I couldn’t put it down. When I was too tired to keep my eyes open anymore, I bought the audiobook so I could keep going. And I did, all the way to the end. It was that compelling. It went deep, both literally and figuratively. I wasn’t expecting a journey through grief and broken familial relationships with a man in the guts of a whale, with any possibility of survival relying upon him coming to terms with his dead father. It’s intense and heartbreaking. It’s meaningfully introspective. And it’s claustrophobic, upsetting, and gross. I have absolutely zero idea if any of it is actually real, but if so, I also learned a bit about whale anatomy and behavior. I also have zero idea if being swallowed by a whale and spending a couple hours in its digestive tract is survivable. I’ll have to do a bit of a research deep dive and find out. I don’t really care either way - it was a ripping good story.

Another great Kraus

This is the 3rd Kraus I’ve read. I enjoy his syntax and attention to detail. I love the gory visuals. Wasn’t sure how this story would take 8 hours, but dangling the reader between morsels of the past and present works well. Will likely read again!

great for scuba divers and fans of aquatic adventures!

I enjoyed this book for sure, but wow was the narration waaaaaaaaaaaaay off. far too serious far too intense, like someone whispering the plot of an adventure novel in your ear. really really really disliked that and it was extremely hard for me to finish because of it but I'm autistic as hell so who knows what's gonna trigger me.