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The BookBrowse Review
The BookBrowse Review
Published January 24, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
The BookBrowse Review
Published January 24, 2024
ISSN: 1930-0018
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Mark Helprin, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Winter's Tale and A Soldier of the Great War, presents a fast-paced, beautifully written novel about the majesty of the sea; a life dedicated to duty, honor, and country; and the gift of falling in love.
A Navy captain near the end of a decorated career, Stephen Rensselaer is disciplined, intelligent, and determined to always do what's right. In defending the development of a new variant of warship, he makes an enemy of the president of the United States, who assigns him to command the doomed line's only prototype––Athena, Patrol Coastal 15––with the intent to humiliate a man who should have been an admiral.
Rather than resign, Rensselaer takes the new assignment in stride, and while supervising Athena's fitting out in New Orleans, encounters a brilliant lawyer, Katy Farrar, with whom he falls in last-chance love. Soon thereafter, he is deployed on a mission that subjects his integrity, morality, and skill to the ultimate test, and ensures that Athena will live forever in the annals of the Navy.
As in the Odyssey, Katy is the force that keeps him alive and the beacon that lights the way home through seven battles, mutiny, and court martial. In classic literary form, an enthralling new novel that extolls the virtues of living by the laws of conscience, decency, and sacrifice, The Oceans and the Stars is nothing short of a masterpiece.
Prologue
Hampton Roads, Winter
Snow falling upon water makes a sound so close to silence that no heart exists it cannot calm. It fell across the Chesapeake and in the harbors and inlets and far out to sea, surrendering to the waters with the slightest exhalation and a muffled hiss. Though few are there to see it, in winter this happens often.
In the construction and maintenance of warships in Virginia's Tidewater, now veiled in steady snow, engines throbbed, cranes swivelled, and barges plodded over black waters. The spacious anchorage of Hampton Roads is ringed by naval stations, air bases, and shipyards making up the largest concentration of naval might in existence. Interwoven with civilian cities and commercial waterways, this sinew of steel is a world of its own. Even so, its powerful present cannot overwhelm images that upwell from the past: the sails of the French fleet in surprising bloom off Yorktown; the Monitor battling the Merrimack; and within living memory the Battle of the Atlantic, when ships burned offshore and corpses washed up on the sand.
From these docks and quays millions left for the World Wars, half a century of Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East. And for the scores of thousands who did not return, the flat coast of Virginia was the last they would ever see of their country. In summer and from war to war, as their ships passed by, young sailors would fall in love with girls on the beaches even though they could hardly see them.
None of this can be erased. Absorbed in their tasks, people do forget, but ofttimes spectral images suddenly appear. Across the water in the vast shipyards, cascades of sparks rooster-tail from the darkness of a cavernous shed or beside a massive hull. As if descended from the flash of guns, they seem to escape the underworld so as to insist upon the eternal presence of battle. And a warship headed out, as in uncountable times before, can arrest a watcher onshore as the ship speeds toward harm's way across the world and far from home.
Sailors find it hard to explain how they were changed by the sea; how even on a carrier, in the company of five thousand souls, they came to know the ocean's loneliness, and how war at sea unaccountably bound them to all others in every age who have sailed in fighting ships. The Navy's stories are different and differently understood. Nonetheless, the stories unfold, and must be told.
* * *
At 0700 on 21 January, crowned by pier after pier of steel-gray ships of the line, Naval Station Norfolk was covered in deep drifts after a great and unusual snowstorm. In an emptied helicopter hangar at the edge of the long base runway, a court-martial was about to be called to order. Specially installed to provide heat as much as illumination, klieg lights shone hot from temporary rigging. At the outset of the proceedings Navy brass had assumed that civilians and press would crowd the hangar. They never did, at least not as imagined, and on the day the findings would come down no one was present other than the principals. Outside, sailors passed by, oblivious of the trial within. The public had long lost interest, and the press, which had been reassigned to cover a sparsely attended presidential inauguration amidst driving snow the day before, were trapped in Washington by hangovers and closed roads.
At its extremities, the cavernous building was dark, but its center was as colorful as a field of wildflowers. Sixteen in all, the national ensign and the flags of the Navy and various fleets and commands stood behind the dais, blindingly lit. Everyone was in dress uniform.
Because the charges included two capital counts, they required in addition to a military judge (in this case an admiral) twelve officers ranking higher than the defendant. Accordingly — as the accused was a captain — thirteen admirals walked in and took their places. The president of the court was Admiral Porter, of four stars, soon to retire, the dean of the Navy, and loved by ...
Excerpted from The Oceans and the Stars by Mark Helprin. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Helprin. Excerpted by permission of Harry N. Abrams Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Mark Helprin's novel The Oceans and the Stars introduces readers to Captain Stephen Rensselaer – "of senior rank, expert in nuclear strategy, an experienced combat veteran and SEAL" as well as the recipient of a Ph.D. from Harvard. Currently serving as an aide to the Secretary of the Navy, his promotion to admiral all but assured, Rensselaer has been tasked with talking the President of the United States out of retiring a class of vessel known as a Patrol Coastal. Rensselaer manages to infuriate the Commander in Chief instead, and, because the man is vindictive, Rensselaer ends up in command of the Athena, one of the very ships in question – a marked demotion. When war breaks out with Iran, the president goes further, ordering the little Athena into battle, which all expect will be a suicide mission. What ensues is an epic tale of increasingly dangerous sea encounters where the intrepid captain must make life-and-death decisions and come to terms with the consequences of his actions.
The subtitle of the book is "A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story," and its first half focuses on the sea itself and Rensselaer's love of it – as well as his love for Katy, a beautiful lawyer whom he plans to marry should he survive his deployment. Helprin's descriptions throughout this section are poetic and vivid:
"Morning on the first day at sea was auspicious as Athena swifted through almost flat waters in a world of blue…The color blue is the mariner's happiness, for so much of one's time on the sea is gray. This was one of those blue days between giant weather systems visible on computer screens and from space as their white pinwheels swirl like global cotton candy."
Although the protagonist is a bit stereotypical, one can't help but find Rensselaer appealing. He's the hero of classics who places honor and duty above personal safety, all the while doing everything he can to protect those around him. He's intelligent and educated (he quotes Shakespeare to his bewildered crew), wise as he directs his inexperienced sailors at sea and in battle, and wily, using unorthodox techniques to best forces that are larger and better armed than his own. Helprin's crafting of this character is exceptional and I found getting to know him through the pages of this novel quite a treat.
The battle sequences, too, have a timeless feel to them, as the Athena engages in seven increasingly dangerous confrontations reminiscent of the mythical seven voyages of Sinbad or the trials of Odysseus (the latter comparison being particularly apt as Katy plays the role of Penelope, waiting at home for her lover to return while fending off suitors). Helprin's descriptions of the ships, weapons and tactics could have been penned by C.S. Forester or Patrick O'Brian, so much so that at times it's hard to remember that The Oceans and the Stars is set in the current day and not the Napoleonic era. The combat sequences set the pulse pounding, and once the action commences the book becomes unputdownable.
It does have its flaws, some serious enough that many readers may put it aside before reaching its real meat – which is found about halfway through this relatively long book. While the beautiful descriptions add a lovely dimension to the narrative, they also slow it down; it's basically too much of a good thing, and it gets tiresome after a while. The author also goes to great lengths to describe ships and armaments. It's something naval enthusiasts will likely love but most readers will find tedious (at one point the author actually instructs those only interested in the story to skip ahead ten pages as he talks about the Athena's architecture). Conversations are often unrealistic and ponderous, tending toward monologue, and the seamen characters are well-developed but not unique. And then there's Helprin's depictions of the few women in the novel, each of whom is stunningly beautiful but offers no value to the plot. The romance between Rensselaer and Katy could have been left out entirely without impacting the story in the slightest.
Although those are fairly major complaints, the second half of The Oceans and the Stars makes up for those issues; indeed, if I were to grade the book just on its latter portion it would be a five-plus-star read for me and I'd be raving about it. Readers willing to persevere to the story's midpoint will be amply rewarded, discovering a thrilling novel of the sea – but you've got to get there first.
Reviewed by Kim Kovacs
The plot of Mark Helprin's novel The Oceans and the Stars imagines the United States at war with Iran. At one point the heroes of the book end up in the Indian Ocean searching for an Iranian vessel, ultimately battling a force the US captain refers to as the NEDSA, the naval arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami, aka the IRGC, also referred to as the Pasdaran or the Sepah).
Iran has two independent military organizations. The first, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, Artesh-e Jomhouri-ye Eslami-ye Iran or simply Artesh, pre-dates the 1979 Iranian Revolution and is responsible for defending the country's borders against external threats and maintaining internal order. It's considered a conventional military force, and has traditional army, navy, air force and air defense branches. Its role is similar to what Americans think of as a classic armed services organization.
The other is the IRGC, formed after the Revolution during a time when the traditional military's allegiance was suspect. The Iranian Constitution states that the IRGC must be maintained to "guard the Revolution and its achievements," and as a result this military body has grown into a more aggressive and more political organization with a wider reach. In addition to having its own army, navy and air force, it has an intelligence wing. The United States designated the IRGC a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) in 2019 because of "its acts of global terror, violations of the laws of armed conflict, assassination attempts, and support for regional terrorist groups," according to the US Foreign Relations Committee.
The IRGC Navy (Nirooy-e Daryaei-e Sepah or NEDSA) was originally established in 1981. Its role was expanded substantially in 1999 when it was tasked with protecting the Strait of Hormuz – a 745-mile stretch of waterway that borders Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates – through which up to a third of the world's seaborne oil passes. Patrolling this stretch of water has been NEDSA's primary mission since. The force participates in other operations such as guarding commercial vessels and fighting pirates – and harassing ships from other nations, particularly those from the US, Israel and other Western countries. Unlike the Artesh Navy, which uses conventional strategies and maneuvers, the IRGC relies more on asymmetric warfare – in short, guerilla tactics.
Under the command of Commodore Alireza Tangsiri, NEDSA employs approximately 20,000 people (out of a total of 150,000-190,000 individuals in the IRGC). It's not an overwhelming force by any means, and most of the vessels it operates are small (but fast). It's estimated that NEDSA controls around 100 patrol boats and corvettes, and between 3,000 and 5,000 speedboats it deploys in groups to overtake and overwhelm its opponents.
Confrontations between US ships and NEDSA occur periodically; there were dozens of incidents during the Obama Administration, and at least a dozen more in the four years Trump was in office. Those encounters are usually simple harassment, with fast attack boats approaching US Navy ships too closely for comfort, sometimes resulting in the US vessel firing warning shots to encourage the NEDSA boats to depart. It's thought that most of these encounters aren't directed by the IRGC's command structure but initiated by over-eager local commanders in the heat of the moment.
NEDSA has sought to capture ships in the region, and they've succeeded from time to time, most famously in 2016 when two US Navy riverine command boats (a type of fast assault craft) were seized and their crews briefly imprisoned and released after the intervention of John Kerry, the Secretary of State at the time. While NEDSA personnel have fired on US ships, the US hasn't fired directly at one of their vessels since 1988, although it has shot down NEDSA drones and missiles many times. Nevertheless, the situation remains volatile, and the US Naval Command has expressed concern that a miscalculation could result in a rapid escalation of hostilities.
War brides on the deck of the SS Argentina, courtesy of Tasnim News Agency CC BY 4.0
Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities
By Kim Kovacs
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