The North Water: Now a major BBC TV series starring Colin Farrell, Jack O'Connell and Stephen Graham

Gripping, entertaining and brilliantly written...I highly and enthusiastically recommend 'The North Water'.This is an original and unusual piece of writing; combining the ideal blend of quality literature while twinned with both an unusual and riveting tale. Only seldom do these two ideals marry together but as and when they do....We have something in the way of alchemy for the intelligent, imaginative reader.'Long listed' for the Booker Prize I note. This sums the Booker up perfectly to my mind-having read a number of Booker winners and thought, 'Really? Really??' And yet this very clever and entertaining book was only, 'Long Listed'. So thank you Booker. You have confirmed what I have always previously suspected, neatly summed up through this crowning little anecdote...Do you know what kept Ultravox 'Vienna' off the Number 1 spot?Yup. That's right... Joe Dolce ''Shaddap You Face''.The Pulitzer Prize for fiction? Yes. The Booker? Err... No.

I came to this book by accident, started it, read it in a day and will re-read again shortly.It's a cold hard trek into a heart of darkness with a well rounded cast of characters, most of whom are rotten bastards. It reads like a well written thriller, takes you to the ends of the earth.It could well give you frostbite, it's that cold. It's brilliant.

I don't know how I missed this book when it was first published but I am so glad I have discovered Ian Maguire. There is so much rubbish published these days it's a joy to find someone who can put words and dialogue together as well as tell a gripping story. Yes there is a lot of bad language but it's part of the authenticity (and in that respect one should ignore john'not for the squeamish' with regards to where albatross are found...whilst even the southern hemisphere based ones can fly around the world there are 3 species in the nothern hemisphere. Long time since I put everything on hold to finish a book.

Ian McGuire’s well regarded novel The North Water has recently been adapted into a TV series. The main character Sumner is a broken man, a doctor with an addiction and a dark past which we eventually learn. He is not exactly a narrator as some scenes take place in his absence but not many. His anatomist is Hugo Drax, a harmonist on the whaling ship to which Summer commits himself. There are many animals in the book, seals, bears, whales and a dog and McGuire contrasts Sumner’s attempts to understand them against Drax’s bestiality. A fairly compelling and worthwhile read.

A couple of pages in and I thought oh my, at last I've found a new writer who just grips me. A big story that dares to be mythic. A whaling ship heads north from Hull, some 19th century corporate skulduggery in the wings. Avarice takes hold, icebergs threaten, humans turn more savage than polar bears. I so wanted the Man Booker prize to give it their gong and label this a modern classic I placed a fiver on the outcome. I lost, but in finding the book I won big time.