Entertainment Weekly's review: We give it a B
From the March 31 issue of Entertainment Weekly:
Gus Openshaw's Whale-Killing Journal
WRITER
Keith Thomson
RELEASE DATE
Mar 24 2006
GENRE
Fiction
PUBLISHER
MacAdam/Cage
Reviewed by Troy Patterson
Here we have a novel – could it be the first of its kind? – purporting to be the reprint of a blog. Gus Openshaw is an absurdist Ahab, a middle-aged cat-food cannery employee who has lost his wife, child, and right arm to a blubbery sea beast – "he'd be pushing the max if they had Big & Tall stores for sperm whales" – and who sets sail seeking vengeance. His blog entries describe silly encounters with pirates, a preppy dungeon master, a psychotic cook, the whale-huggers of "Bluepeace," and a nonagenarian navigator, among others. The love interest is his arms dealer's raven-haired intern, who's sold him a remote-controlled robotic giant squid. This is all fairly amusing and entirely inconsequential – an anti-Moby Dick. Grade: B