[A] delving, haunted and poetic debut.”
—The New York Times Book Review
"Masterly."
—The New Yorker
"Fathoms immediately earns its place in the pantheon of classics of the new golden age of environmental writing."
—Literary Hub
“A work of bright and careful genius. Equal parts Rebecca Solnit and Annie Dillard, Giggs masterfully combines lush prose with conscientious history and boots-on-the-beach reporting. With Giggs leading us gently by the hand we dive down, and down, and down, into the dark core of the whale, which, she convincingly reveals, is also the guts of the world.”
—Robert Moor, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration
"Fathoms took my breath away. Every page is suffused with magic and meaning. Humanity’s relationship with nature has never been more important or vulnerable, and we are truly fortunate that at such a pivotal moment, a writer of Rebecca Giggs’s caliber is here to capture every beautiful detail, every aching nuance. She is in a league of her own."
—Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
“Lyrical...Giggs’s writing has an old-fashioned lushness and elaborateness of thought. Its finest passages—and they are many—awaken a sense of wonder.”
—Washington Post
“[Giggs’s] narrative widens the aperture of our attention with a literary style so stunning that the reader may forget to blink...In a story that extends across several continents, Ms. Giggs marshals lapidary language to give the crisis a compelling voice. Her prose, like the oceans in which her subjects roam, is immersive; her sentences submerge us in a sea of sensations. A reader fond of dog-earing choice turns of phrase in Fathoms might find, at evening’s end, a book pleated like an accordion with an abundance of keepsakes.”
—Wall Street Journal
“A profound meditation...Giggs explores how whales have permeated our lives and the many ways we have invaded and transformed theirs. Each chapter orbits a different aspect of this long and fraught relationship—commodification, pollution, voyeurism, adoration, mythology—swerving wherever Giggs’s extensive research and fervent curiosity take her...Giggs’s prose is fluid, sensuous, and lyrical. She has a poet’s gift for startling and original imagery...The lushness of her sentences and the intensity of her vision inspire frequent rereading—not for clarity, but for sheer pleasure and depth of meaning. ”
—LA Review of Books
“In Fathoms, Rebecca Giggs rips the metaphors off whales and brings us closer than we can usually get to the creatures themselves. Along the way, she shows us how intimately whales are shaping our lives, how they change air quality, and crime, and even our conception of time. I can't stop thinking about the connections she has unearthed, how a whale is connected to a meteor, a mother's breast, a landfill. Under the spell of her deliciously evocative prose, you get the sense that you are truly, finally, glimpsing a whale in full glory. Like the busks she writes about—tiny missives carved into whalebone corsets by sailors—this book leaves an imprint.”
—Lulu Miller, author of Why Fish Don’t Exist and cofounder of NPR’s Invisibilia
"Rebecca Giggs' Fathoms is a triumph, a deliciously rich work of art that, as if by magic, combines exquisite prose that floats off the page and into your heart with scientific accuracy and epic scope. This is by far the best book about whales I have ever read. What an achievement!"
—Wendy Williams, author of The Language of Butterflies and New York Times bestseller The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion
"With a conservationist mindset, Giggs reiterates that the whale and its life, legacy, and precarious environmental state are reflective of the greater issues the Earth faces, from ecological upheaval to overconsumption. Whether describing the majesty of the blue whale or the human assault on sea ecology due to paper and plastic pollution, the author’s prose is poetic, beautifully smooth, urgently readable, and eloquently informative."
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“There is much to marvel at here...Deeply researched and deeply felt, Giggs’ intricate investigation, beautifully revelatory and haunting, urges us to save the whales once again, and the oceans, and ourselves.”
—Booklist, starred review
“In the whale, Giggs truly does find the world. She finds clues that unlock how humans have engaged nature—tales of greed, aggression, wonder, desperation, longing, nostalgia, love, curiosity and obsession. Her prose is luminous...In tracing humankind’s continuing intersection with these alluring creatures, Giggs ultimately uncovers seeds of hope and, planting them in her fertile mind, cultivates a lush landscape that offers remarkable views of nature, humanity and how we might find a way forward together.”
—BookPage, starred review
"Fathoms reads like a poem. Its virtuoso thinking is a revelation. I can’t think of many books in which love for the world and uncompromising, ever-deepening rigour come together in this way. Time slows down. This book makes a permanent dent in the reader."
—Maria Tumarkin, author of Axiomatic
“A searching debut...Giggs displays a keen awareness of what it means to write about a creature whose future is just as uncertain as our own.”
—The Nation
"With lyrical language, Giggs embarks on an underwater journey to uncover the place of whales in the chain of life. Her immersive exploration of varied species of whales illustrates the interconnectedness of all life and the ways human depredations reverberate from the smallest creatures to this largest of Earth’s animals."
—Library Journal
"Brilliantly full of wonder...A series of essays that span aeons and vast amounts of space, from the bottom of the ocean to the far reaches of the solar system."
—The Economist
“Dazzingly well-researched...combining reportage, cultural criticism and poem as a call to action in the spirit of Rachel Carson, Giggs is an assured new voice in narrative non-fiction.”
—The Irish Times
“Wonder pours out of every page of this gorgeously written and daringly imagined book.”
—Slate
“Fathoms: The World in the Whale is perhaps the finest book written about whales since Moby-Dick was published 170 years ago. It’s also one of the best accounts I’ve ever read of the interaction, intended and unintended, between humans and other species—a work of genuinely literary imagination.”
—New York Review of Books
07/01/2020
Australian nature writer Giggs bookends her immersive exploration of whales with stories of beached whales, one in Perth and one near Sydney. Exploring varied species of whales, Giggs shares how their anatomy, uniquely suited for their lives as sea-faring mammals, proves lethal when they are on land. The author explains how whales' vertebrae is so heavy that outside of the water they crush the organs lying below; blubber is so insulating that whales smother and cook on land. Building on her theme of environmental concern, Giggs guides readers from the ravages of 19th-century whaling to modern-day chemical pollutants that accumulate in whales' blubber, illustrating the interconnectedness of all life and the ways man's depredations travel from the smallest creatures to this largest of Earth's animals. Giggs notes that while whaling has declined markedly after crusades against it in the 1980s, other dangers remain, especially man's heedless consumer culture. One whale found dead near Spain, for example, had swallowed an entire collapsed greenhouse that had blown into the ocean. VERDICT In lyrical language, Giggs leads readers on a journey through underwater cultures and the place of whales in the chain of life. Recommended for readers interested in nature, ecology, and environmentalism.—Caren Nichter, Univ. of Tennessee at Martin
Shiromi Arserio’s voice conveys sadness and grief as she relates the author’s experience with the vigil for a dying humpback whale on an Australian beach. The sadness returns elsewhere in Giggs’s meditation on whales, especially when her thoughts turn to the plastic and other human objects found inside the massive sea animals. When Giggs tells of the one time she tasted whale flesh, a note of shock comes into her voice, reflecting her reluctance. Giggs’s reflections on how to stay constructively engaged in helping whales survive have a gentle grace, whether she’s recounting the joy of seeing a whale swimming at sea or expressing her nostalgia for a childhood museum trip. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Shiromi Arserio’s voice conveys sadness and grief as she relates the author’s experience with the vigil for a dying humpback whale on an Australian beach. The sadness returns elsewhere in Giggs’s meditation on whales, especially when her thoughts turn to the plastic and other human objects found inside the massive sea animals. When Giggs tells of the one time she tasted whale flesh, a note of shock comes into her voice, reflecting her reluctance. Giggs’s reflections on how to stay constructively engaged in helping whales survive have a gentle grace, whether she’s recounting the joy of seeing a whale swimming at sea or expressing her nostalgia for a childhood museum trip. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
★ 2020-04-26
Seafaring scrutiny of whales, their oceanic environment, and the dangers to their survival.
For Australian journalist Giggs, the sighting of a humpback whale beached on a local shoreline sparked her curiosity for the life and lore of the storied marine mammal. She became captivated by the animal after an informative encounter with the wildlife officer who euthanized the whale. The entire ordeal inspired a research project that encompasses not only physical and ecological elements, but also artistic representations and philosophy. Giggs presents the bounty of that scholarship in crisp, creatively written chapters addressing the many layers of the whale population’s unique physiology and evolutionary history, sociality, above-water balletic athleticism, and enigmatic “biophony” of their vocalizations. Most importantly, she analyzes how their behavior can be predictive for the Earth’s future. An adventurous explorer, the author immerses readers in an Australian whale watching tour and then dips into the deep international waters of Japan, where whaling ships flourish. With a conservationist mindset, Giggs reiterates that the whale and its life, legacy, and precarious environmental state are reflective of the greater issues the Earth faces, from ecological upheaval to overconsumption. Whether describing the majesty of the blue whale or the human assault on sea ecology due to paper and plastic pollution, the author’s prose is poetic, beautifully smooth, urgently readable, and eloquently informative. Her passion for whales leaps off the page, urging readers to care and—even more so—become involved in their protection and preservation. Throughout the book, the author’s debut, she brilliantly exposes “how regular human life seeped into the habitats of wildlife, and how wildlife returned back to us, the evidence of our obliviousness.” Refreshingly, she also reveals glimmers of hope regarding what whales can teach the human race about our capacity to ecologically coexist with the natural world.
A thoughtful, ambitiously crafted appeal for the preservation of marine mammals.
