Another Rambling Novel About Whales

You can't write a novel about whales without the shadow of Moby Dick eclipsing your laptop. With his new novel, Swell, Corwin Ericson doesn't run from Melville's great white metaphorâ??he charges at it, giddily, with his arms spread wide. But Swell isn't an unimaginative retelling of Moby Dick, and it doesn't really resemble Moby Dick in any meaningful way except for the most important one: its passionate love of digression. Orange Whippey, the seafaring narrator, doesn't use one word when two will do. And he refuses to use two words when he can somehow cram in an anecdote about rare sea life, mashed up with an extended meditation about what the first human to eat a lobster or clam must've been like.