JOURNEY OF SEA, HEART, AND LAND

A young man from Colombia seeks adventures and a new family at sea.

Beginning in San Andrés in 2001, Gutierrez Perez’s novel follows 18-year-old Elías Gómez,  who’s raised by his employer, Lina Vespucio. Elías dreams of the sea (despite losing his father years earlier to a shark attack), and when he meets Ludwig Bineo, an old friend of the Vespucio family and captain of El Valhalla, he feels instantly drawn to the man. As Bineo’s new cabin boy, Elías sails all over the world, from Finland to Mallorca, hoping to find and reconnect with his estranged mother. Soon, however, his quest turns away from distant lands and toward two young women who capture his heart—Helena, Bineo’s niece, and Leena, a young Finnish woman. Gutierrez Perez naturally invokes Moby-Dick throughout this somewhat disjointed sea adventure and positions Elías as a funny, self-aware Ishmael: “My boss—believe it or not, dear reader—hoped that one day I would become the captain of my own ship.” As soon as Helena, Leena, and other women enter the picture, however, the novel dissolves into a string of undeveloped conversations for nearly 400 pages as Elías tries to decide whom he’d rather bed. El Valhalla ends up seeming less like a fishing or trade vessel and more like a party boat, considering how much time Elías spends drinking, gallivanting, and romancing. Despite the title, and unlike Moby-Dick, the sea gets short shrift (we hear little about Elías’ duties). Additionally, stiff phrasing, grammatical inconsistencies (while Leena is a cis woman, her pronouns are all over the place), and frequent typos make it difficult to enjoy the wandering plot or the many steamy love scenes (“I pulled to my face and he kissed me. But not only that! She put her tongue inside me, and she caressed it with great speed and enormous excitement”). Still, there’s an originality and humor here that will lure readers should the author choose to revisit and revise.

At times amusing but too often meandering and incomprehensible.