It’s not every book that decides to use 19th-century American novelist Herman Melville as a minor supporting character, but the reader would immediately understand that such a book would have appropriately nautical themes.
Aquinnah is a very nautical book, though there are no white whales; this isn’t a book about hunting or otherwise capturing anything. It is ultimately a book about letting go.
Spanning centuries but relegated to a tight cast of characters, Aquinnah could be said to be about generational trauma if there were generations to be examined. Instead, it’s a book that features a group of sad, seaside immortals and their grave mythological sin.
Our point of view character – if we can quite call her such – is twenty-something Amber, who is suffering chronic pain in the distant year of 1973 and who has no understanding of her origins. It isn’t until a man claiming to be her father drags her off to the secret town of Aquinnah, Massachusetts, that she begins to understand that her life is much more horrifying than she might expect.
The narrative suffers some legibility hiccups as it jumps from character to character and time period to time period, and the central mystery is largely telegraphed: we know something is in the water in Aquinnah, we’re just not quite certain what. The problems are overcome, somewhat by Rachele Argano’s scratchy illustrations. We’re endeared to this world, however bleak and harsh it might be, because we are visually enchanted.
The book evens out near its conclusion, after the centuries-gone flashbacks have established what we need to know and the Amber-based action gets moving, and we’re treated to a sort of eldritch horror more obviously Lovecraft than Melville. This is a book about people with too intimate relationship with the sea.
Ultimately, Aquinnah achieves what it sets out to do, though it does so without many surprises. As stylish as it might be, it lacks the narrative power to demand much attention, let alone a second reading.
