The Night Ship

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I was always relieved when the story moved to the 1989 setting, and I gritted my teeth at attempted to get through the 1629 parts.

There are two narrative arcs both involving young protagonists, a young girl and boy. They have many similarities. Both are nine years of age; both have lost their mother, both believe there is a monster haunting them, and both may meet their end in the same geographical location though centuries apart. Mayken has a father she’s never met. Her father is a merchant who lives in a distant land where the midday sun is fierce enough to melt a Dutch child.We follow Mayken’s adventures on this months-long journey across the world. But we know from the beginning that the ship will not complete its trip. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. She is beautiful. Her upper works are painted green and yellow and at her prow – oh, best of all – crouches a carved red lion! His golden mane curls; his claws sink into the beam. He snarls down at the water. Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South.Mayken must not say a word about the baby because it shouldn’t have been up there in the first place. She has practiced with her nursemaid.

I wasn’t sure how Kidd was going to knit the two stories together, but she did! This is a heavily researched story about the souls on the Batavia. Kidd provides an epilogue which illuminates the fact from the fiction. Decorating the stern of the ship is a row of great wooden men. Great in that they are almost life-height and full-bearded. Great, too, in that they wear long robes. Your key to the Below World,” says Pelgrom grandly. He brings forward a sour-smelling bundle. “A disguise. You can’t trot around down there in your fine gown and lace collar. They’ll see at once that you don’t belong.” Both are outsiders, in peril from people in their community. There is plenty more. But both come into possession of a stone with a hole in it, that is supposed to have special properties, a witch-stone, or hag-stone. The very same one. It is a link across three hundred sixty years, connecting their parallel experiences. As children, neither has control over much of anything, so they are both at the mercy of the adults around them, not all of whom are benign. With limited immediate familial resources, they are trying to create a kind of family for themselves. Loss is central to both Mayken and Gil’s experience; for starters, each child has lost their mother. Discuss some of their major (and minor) losses throughout the novel and how these may have shaped them as characters.Pelgrom shrugs. Mayken tries to scratch under her cap, only her sleeves are too long. Pelgrom rolls them up. His smile is charming. Each child has parental figures who step in at different times in their journeys (for example, Imke, Holdfast, Dutch and Silvia). How would you describe these stand-in parents? In what ways were these adults important for Mayken and Gil?