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Rites of Passage: With an introduction by Robert McCrum Paperback – 28 Nov 2013

by Robert McCrum (Introduction), William Golding (Author)

2 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0571298549 ISBN-10: 0571298540 Edition: Main

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The classic novel from Golding's Sea Trilogy, now with a beautiful new cover. With an introduction by Robert McCrum.

The first volume of William Golding's Sea Trilogy. Sailing to Australia in the early years of the nineteenth century, Edmund Talbot keeps a journal to amuse his godfather back in England. Full of wit and disdain, he records the mounting tensions on the ancient, sinking warship where officers, sailors, soldiers and emigrants jostle in the cramped spaces below decks. Then a single passenger, the obsequious Reverend Colley, attracts the animosity of the sailors, and in the seclusion of the fo'castle something happens to bring him into a 'hell of degradation', where shame is a force deadlier than the sea itself.

'The work of a master at the full stretch of his age and wisdom - necessary, provoking, urgent, rich, complex and rare.' - The Times

'An extraordinary novel.' - Observer

'Golding's best and most accessible story since Lord of the Flies.' - Melvyn Bragg

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Product details

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Faber Paperback; Main edition (28 November 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0571298540
ISBN-13: 978-0571298549
Product Dimensions: 12.7 x 2.1 x 19.6 cm
Boxed-product Weight: 222 g
Average Customer Review: 2 customer reviews

Product description

About the Author

William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911 and was educated at Marlborough Grammar School and at Brasenose College, Oxford. Before he became a schoolmaster he was an actor, a lecturer, a small-boat sailor and a musician. His first novel, Lord of the Flies, was published in 1954. He won the Booker Prize for his novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. He was knighted in 1988. He died at his home in the summer of 1993.

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Overlong.

10 March 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I expected to enjoy an interesting novel in regard to Edmund's seagoing experiences, but found the book is overlong. Events are far too drawn out to hold one's interest.

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One Star

1 March 2015

Format: Kindle Edition

Hard to read and follow with the excessive use of old ENGLISH

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Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon.com

Amazon.com: 14 reviews

Medraut

Excellent

2 October 2016 - Published on Amazon.com

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The author, what can one say that hasn't already been said? I will read the trilogy, after having watched the on screen adaptation starring Cumberpatch.

JenP

terrible formatting and errors make it almost unreadable

28 January 2015 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

The low rating is for the quality of this kindle edition and not the book (which I have been unable to read due to the terrible formatting.

Beware if you buy this kindle edition. It's unreadable due to large amounts of formatting issues, typos, and other problems. I guess there's a reason it was only $1.42. I found another kindle version for $7, maybe that version is better. I've attached a photo of one of the better pages (the one I was currently trying to read). Each page is terrible.

7 people found this helpful

Dennis Coates

Classic novel...

30 April 2013 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

A classic novel, but I mistakenly thought it was a nonfiction treatment! Maybe I'll read it someday just for enrichment.

Paula Letch

A reading group chore

17 March 2016 - Published on Amazon.com

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Found it a heavy going novel with only a couple of bits of humour here and there. Thought having it set out as a journal quite an interesting tway of portraying the journey - paralleling a ships log but won' t be reading it a second time, and if it hadn't been my reading groups book this month, am pretty sure would not have bothered finishing it!

One person found this helpful

Roger Brunyate

Jonah

3 July 2017 - Published on Amazon.com

Spurred by reading LORD OF THE FLIES (1954) as a teenager, I bought Golding's next two novels on impulse, found them much heavier going, so abandoned the author until I read the first book again a few years ago. What a pleasant surprise, then, to find his RITES OF PASSAGE (1980) once more easy to read, indeed almost comic in tone. Although later extended into a trilogy, TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, this first volume was originally intended as a stand-alone novel, and works perfectly well on its own.

The novel, which takes place in the first quarter of the nineteenth century on board a vessel of the Royal Navy bound for Sydney, is in the form of a journal. The writer, Edmund Talbot, writes for his noble patron, who has secured him a post as aide to the Governor of New South Wales. Very conscious of his station, he is surprised that the Captain did not greet him personally, and is aggrieved at the size of his cabin, which he calls a hutch) but he soon resolves to make the best of it:

I have resigned myself therefore, used Wheeler for some of this unpacking,
set out my books myself, and seen my chests taken away. I should be angry
if the situation were not so farcical. However, I had a certain delight in some
of the talk between the fellows who took them off, the words were so perfectly
nautical. I have laid Falconer's Marine Dictionary by my pillow; for I am
determined to speak the tarry language as perfectly as any of these rolling
fellows!

There is much to smile at in Talbot's genial superiority, his attempts to "speak Tarpaulin" as he calls it, and his inevitable petty comeuppances, as when he blithely asserts that he is a good sailor only to get sicker than all the rest. But we are more than willing to see the ship and other passengers through his eyes. There is a painter named Brocklebank and his supposed wife and daughter (the one too young and the other too old). There is a noted Rationalist named Pettiman, who patrols the decks with a blunderbuss determine to shoot the first albatross he sees, in order to prove the Tale of the Ancient Mariner mere superstition. And there is a newly-fledged parson named Colley, an obsequious creature who "not only favours me with his révérence but tops it off with a smile of such understanding and sanctity [that] he is a kind of walking invitation to mal de mer.

Yet it is with Colley that Golding first begins to show the darker side for which he is famous. For ever since Jonah, seamen have been superstitious about having priests aboard, and the terrifying Captain Anderson seems to make this superstition personal. Rev. Colley falls foul of the captain, is banished from the quarterdeck, and soon begins to feel like a pariah on board. Despite his dislike, Edmund makes some attempt to help him, but he gets distracted by the over-telegraphed charms of Zenobia Brocklebank (the so-called daughter). So Colley's fall, when it comes, is both terrible and alone.

I go back in my mind to reading LORD OF THE FLIES. There is the same repurposing of a traditional genre (there TREASURE ISLAND or a school story, here a nautical yarn), there is the same deceptive lightness of touch, and most importantly the same attention to those special conditions in which normal social conventions break down and human beings reveal the savagery never far beneath the skin; it is easy to see Colley as another Piggy. But this is a more personal book; the darkness is less atavistic, less a matter of what others do, more a question of what lurks in one's own soul.

Edmund Talbot is not the only journal writer on board. It appears that Colley has also been keeping a log, in the form of a long letter to his sister, and this takes up most of the last third of the book. What is interesting is how these two separate accounts complement each other, giving us insight into the tormented mind of the young parson, telling us more about the less-than-gentlemanly officers, and—despite the fact that Colley virtually worships him—making us reevaluate our protagonist, Edmund Talbot. You could imagine Melville writing this short novel, in terms of its moral issues and naval setting. But Golding seems that much smaller, less absolute. This one is a sordid affair, from which nobody emerges entirely clean. Not quite another LORD OF THE FLIES, still less a BILLY BUDD or HEART OF DARKNESS. But those set a high standard indeed, and this is still a very fine achievement.

4.5 stars.

10 people found this helpful