Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #288111 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-09
• Binding: Paperback
• 278 pages

Synopsis
In the cabin of an ancient, stinking warship bound for Australia, a man writes a journal to entertain his godfather back in England. With wit and disdain he records mounting tensions on board, as an obsequious clergyman attracts the animosity of the tyrannical captain and surly crew.

Customer Reviews

wonderfully evocative and moving
I read this book when it was first published and have since revisited it a couple of times. It is a wonderfully imagined account of a sea voyage to Australia at the time of Napoleonic Wars. The very mixed group of emigrants experience conditions aboard which are completely convincing - cramped, unpleasant, smelly and highly dangerous - with an equally covincing hierarchy of naval personnel. Everyone is interesting, everyone is fully characterised. Mostly it is seen through the eyes of young Mr. Talbot, who is on his way to make a distinguished career in the colonies.
He has nothing but contempt for the apparently ridiculous clergyman, Colley, but in that he sadly mistaken, as he discovers when he finds and reads Colley's journal, and it is in Colley that the tragedy in the book lies. This is a most original book written by a very great novelist, and it deals as always with Golding with the great theme of good and evil revealed through the characters, their attitudes and how they behave. It won the Booker prize and was a very worthy winner. It is just as powerful today as it was then.

Interesting and atmospheric
This is a slow-moving but highly atmospheric book. Like 'the Inheritors' Golding uses a change of perspective towards the end of the story to radically change the atmosphere. The book starts out in the form of a diary by a well-connected young man who is confident to the point of arrogance. He, a passenger on an old warship, narrates events on the journey to entertain his aristocratic uncle. Another poassenger on the ship is an unpopular priest who gets himself into his own personal nightmare. The contempt that the young man holds for the priest is changed when he obtains the man's diary and reads events and observations from the other's perspective.
I enjoyed the book for several reasons: Although it is slow moving it builds up the atmosphere of the ship; the young narrator's arrogance and sharpness come through the writing of his journal; events can only be pieced together through the journals and dual perspectives can be gained in some instances; the decisive event on the voyage is unseen by the narrator, but deduced through various conversations.
This is a slow-moving book, but it is very atmospheric and beautifully written. The use of the second journal acts in the same way as shifting focus from the thinking of the Neanderthals to the Cro-Magnons in 'the Inheritors', but in 'Rites of Passage' the reader is never outside the journals of the narrator and the priest and these serve as the limits of perspective.

Technically superb but a little dull
Golding is a master of the English language and it shows here, with a vivid account of life at sea in the 19th Century.
This novel is technically superb, with well drawn characters, lush prose, an outstanding attention to detail and some clever social commentary that is never heavy handed.
Yet for all the undoubted strengths of this book there is one factor that cannot be ignored - it is dull! I understand the author is trying to convey the feeling of boredom on such a trip but it does not make for a thrilling read. The book only starts to entertain when the Priests story is revealed, after three quarters of the novel!
For a more exciting read try Lord of the Flies or something by Green, his prose may not be as graceful but he provides a far more entertaining read focusing on similair themes.