THE YEAR OF THE SEAL

by Victor B. Scheffer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1970

In their clumsy words men try to say what they feel about the world ocean. . . and with the noblest of phrases they fall short. The ocean rolls on, untouched by words."" Mr. Scheffer's words (if you remember the prize-winning The Year of the Whale--1969) do not fall short: they are the seismic instrument of a biologist and they can be precise and informative; they also express the quickened awareness of a supremely gifted writer who charts this year of a seal pup with immediacy, with rankly physical detail, with chilling intimations of mortality (the great bull--""Age and illness and a thousand little deaths have done him in""). As for his pinniped, he is born in July at ten pounds and shares the life of the harem; he grows and is never handsomer than in October; he swims and swims and by March will have left his native island Tolstoi where ""the Bering Sea whispers on the beach"" and have reached California; eventually he will return at a year to the rookery. Moral concerns thread the narrative: the sealing kills during the summer (""for the price on their heads I care little"" and perhaps you will never again wear a seal coat); their clubbing to death; their undernourishment but then again their threatening intake of food; etc., etc. One reaches the terminus of the cycle with chastened admiration; Mr. Scheffer's little seal flips, flaps, swirls through these pages and is splendidly alive before he may be killed.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Scribners

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION