The Night Ocean

By: Paul La Farge

Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers

Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins

Publisher's summary

From the award-winning author and New Yorker contributor, a riveting novel about secrets and scandals, psychiatry and pulp fiction, inspired by the lives of H. P. Lovecraft and his circle.

Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears. The police say it's suicide. Marina is a psychiatrist, and she doesn't believe them.

A tour-de-force of storytelling, The Night Ocean follows the lives of some extraordinary people: Lovecraft, the most influential American horror writer of the 20th century, whose stories continue to win new acolytes, even as his racist views provoke new critics; Barlow, a seminal scholar of Mexican culture who killed himself after being blackmailed for his homosexuality (and who collaborated with Lovecraft on the beautiful story "The Night Ocean"); his student, future Beat writer William S. Burroughs; and L. C. Spinks, a kindly Canadian appliance salesman and science-fiction fan - the only person who knows the origins of The Erotonomicon, purported to be the intimate diary of Lovecraft himself.

As a heartbroken Marina follows her missing husband's trail in an attempt to learn the truth, the novel moves across the decades and along the length of the continent, from a remote Ontario town, through New York and Florida to Mexico City. The Night Ocean is about love and deception - about the way that stories earn our trust, and betray it.

©2017 Paul La Farge (P)2017 Recorded Books

soon interesting

this book was well written. I learned fascinating facts about Lovecraft. This was full of twists and turns keeping your interest at all times

Dead Cthulhu Still Lies Asleep

For a novel claiming to be about Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos there's scarcely little information about this author or his work. There is the standard Lovecraft bio in the beginning, but this is a missing persons story that gets side tracked by focusing on authors associated with the rise of pulp horror and who were tangentially connected with Lovecraft. Informative as this book might be about the doings of these writers, in the end all we have are fictionalized renditions of their thoughts and interactions. There is precious little insight as to how they invented their worlds. There are a couple of plot twists , but don't expect Cthulhu and his minions to make an appearance.

Excellent narration, odd book

3.5 stars. This book has gotten generally rave reviews from critics. I can appreciate the skill of La Farge, his prose is clear and he builds characters well, and there is a certain dexterity to his construction of this story within a story within a story. But overall, it just sort of left me cold. In a somewhat convoluted nutshell, the story starts with the promisingly creepy disappearance of the narrator's writer husband. Her husband had voluntarily entered a hospital for some mental health issues, but he goes missing one night, apparently walking into a lake. The story then flashes back and she recounts how her husband researched and wrote a book about H. P. Lovecraft and his relationship (often thought to be mysterious and potentially romantic) with Robert Barlow. In telling this winding tale, it includes a book within the book, the flashback story of Barlow pre- and post-Lovecraft, and a flashback story of a character named Leo Spinks, before it returns to present day and follows Marina (the narrator) as she deals with her husband's disappearance.

While La Farge brings to bear ingenuity in the layered tale and excellent technique, I never found myself truly absorbed. First, I did not care much about any of the characters, which made it difficult to stay immersed in the story. Second, the circuitous route the story took was unexpected, but not in a good way--it never truly lived up to the atmospheric beginning. Last, the ending was interesting, but again felt sort of tacked on. It almost felt as if La Farge had a lot of ideas he wanted to cram in, but in the end it felt heavy on technical execution and light on a real emotional center.

A fiction holding a story carrying a lie that contains a whimper.

“Scratch a professor and you find a paranoiac, Barlow thought. But scratch a dean and you find a con artist.”
― Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean

OK, things I loved: Tales within tales folded inside tales. Lies wrapped in lies buried under lies. Love covering love uncovering lost love. Middle sagged. Ending was great. An interesting premise. The ability to flip the narrative and begin again was great. What can you expect in a book filled with Futurists and ardent fans of SciFi in the 40s and 50s?

But still the book only floats between 3 and 4 stars. No tide. Absolutely no rip tide. There is a plot, it may be shaped like an Ouroboros, but never the less, it is there, it persists like a bad, but not very scary dream. The movement has little energy to it. It slides forward and backward, up and down.

Anyway, I don't want to knock it too hard. I did read it. A lot of the secondary characters (HP Lovecraft, Pohl, etc) stole the show from the prime non-movers.

Oh, but the Amanda Dewey cover and design absolutely kicks ass.

Completely absorbing.

La Farge's novel is a gem, by turns observant, philosophical, and suspenseful. The nested structure gives the story both a figurative depth and a textual complexity that may not be to everyone's taste, but if you enjoy both a narrative challenge and metanarrative adventure, this so be right up your alley. Pure joy.

Satisfying, but takes too long to develop

When it was over, I did enjoy this book, but there were times during the reading that I was not wild about it. It is difficult to tell what story is being told in this book. It is not hard to follow, but there are times when the most interesting story, the one I thought I was listening to, is hidden for long stretches behind the story of an H.P. Lovecraft fan journey.

The writing is good, the performance is good, and in the end I liked it, but there were times when I wasn't sure I wanted to finish it.

Trying too hard to make fiction that is “as strange and rich as fact”.

Paul La Farge’s The Night Ocean tells the tale of Charlie Willet and his obsession with H. P. Lovecraft. Narrated primarily by his wife, Marina, the story documents Charlie’s descent into psychotic fervor and eventual disappearance after researching and writing a book that “tells the truth” about H.P. Lovecraft’s alleged homosexual tendencies. The book follows the “story within a story” trope and is roughly divided into three main parts: one detailing the story around Lovecraft and his young friend Robert Barlow, a potential love interest; the second telling Charlie’s tale, and the third detailing Marina’s efforts to understand what happened to Charlie. While La Farge’s style of writing is entertaining and crisp, and while the historical fiction aspect is enjoyable for fans (and anti-fans) of Lovecraft, the story is exceedingly tedious, and in my opinion, it’s tedious length simply does not justify its ending. There is simply no point to multiple arcs in the story, and while this makes it a story whose journey ought to be enjoyed more than its ending, the plodding plot is dull and monotonous for a majority of the book! I picked this up as a fan of Lovecraft and also as someone aware of all the terrible history and controversy surrounding his work. Although I feel that The Night Ocean did not disappoint when it came to this aspect (of enjoyable references or tidbits or half-truths concerning Lovecraft and weird writers of that era), I felt that it’s plot was hackneyed, dull, and that it tried way too hard.

The real story was lost

I had a hard time getting into this…and it remained difficult to stay engaged. I found the vehicle story about Charlie and Marina interesting, but most of the book is the back story on Lovecraft and Barlow, which I found very uninteresting and hard to follow not being in-the-know about his work. I would not recommend this.

Not for me.

struggled to finish. the pace was slow. too much background unrelated to the mystery.

Too boring

I tried to like this book and gave it a three hours of my time . Just did not hold my interest and frankly could have cared less. Don’t waste your time . Too many great books out there to suffer thru the ones that drag on with nothing to say.