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Declan O Donnell has sailed out of Oregon and deep into the vast, wild ocean, having had just finally enough of other people and their problems. He will go it alone, he will be his own country, he will be beholden to and beloved of no one. No man is an island, my butt, he thinks. I am that very man...
But the galaxy soon presents him with a string of odd, entertaining, and dangerous passengers, who become companions of every sort and stripe. The Plover is the story of their adventures and misadventures in the immense blue country one of their company calls Pacifica. Hounded by a mysterious enemy, reluctantly acquiring one new resident after another, Declan O Donnell's lonely boat is eventually crammed with humor, argument, tension, and a resident herring gull.
Brian Doyle's The Plover is a sea novel, a maritime adventure, the story of a cold man melting, a compendium of small miracles, an elegy to Edmund Burke, a watery quest, a battle at sea - and a rapturous, heartfelt celebration of life's surprising paths, planned and unplanned.
BookBrowse Review
"It comes down to this: I love Brian Doyle's love of words. It matches mine. He uses words like "fluffle," "whappering," "piscatory." And his imagery! "…dawn pouring infinitesimally into the boat as if from a vast sifter filled with grains of light..." I've never read that in any other novel! I felt effervescent while reading so many pages of this, like I was made up entirely of the bubbles that rise to the top of a glass of Dr.
Pepper.
But the overarching problem I have with The Plover is that there's mostly no narrative drive. There are many sections in which Doyle focuses on a crew member from the cargo ship Tanets, who is swept off the boat and out to sea during a storm after stepping out for a moment. So basically a deceased crew member. Yet Doyle goes on and on with the man's backstory. This is not interesting enough to want to continue to read. And while the descriptions of sea life and the work to do aboard the Plover, and the supplies on board, and the malevolent existence of Enrique aboard the Tanets are beautifully written, they're overpowering. Doyle's ideas become too vast and static at the expense of whatever story there might have been. It just doesn't MOVE." - Rory Aronsky, BookBrowse
Other Reviews
"Starred Review. Readers will enjoy this bracing and euphoric ode to the vastness of the ocean and the unexpectedness of life." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. A rare and unusual book and a brilliant, mystical exploration of the human spirit." - Kirkus
"In stylized prose with frequent nods to Coleridge, Melville, and Stevenson, Doyle's surreal world is alive with vivid characters, mysterious birds, and lyrical philosophy about contentment. A joyous journey of discovery." - Booklist
"Every sentence Doyle writes about the ocean smacks of authenticity, which makes these additional plot threads seem all the more incongruous. When the novel focuses on Declan and the elements, the results are gripping, but when it strives to be a modern-day South Seas yarn, the results quickly go adrift." - Publishers Weekly
"The Plover is about beauty, loneliness, the mysteries of the sea, albatrosses, an unforgettable young girl, language, healing, and love. And plenty more... Few contemporary novels shimmer like this one." - Anthony Doerr, author of The Shell Collector
"Brian Doyle has spun a great sea story, filled with apparitions, poetry, thrills, and wisdom. The sweet, buoyant joy under every sentence carried me along and had me cheering. I enjoyed this book enormously." - Ian Frazier, author of Travels in Siberia
"Board this boat! Here's Doyle at his probing, astonishing, wordslinging best." - Robin Cody, author of Voyage of a Summer Sun
This information about The Plover was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Brian Doyle edits Portland Magazine at the University of Portland in Oregon. He is the author of many books, among them the sprawling Oregon novel Mink River. His work has been reprinted in the annual Best American Essays, Best American Science and Nature Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing anthologies. Among various honors for his work are a Catholic Book Award, three Pushcart Prizes, the John Burroughs Award for Nature Essays, Foreword Reviews's Book of the Year Award in 2011, and, puzzling him to this day, the 2008 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
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