Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Watch that Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic by Allan Wolf YP FIC WOLF


A novel in verse that has 24 different voices from the Titanic, including famous figures like Molly “the Unsinkable Brown, Captain E.J. Smith, and John Jacob Astor and less famous figures.  These include a Lebanese immigrant discovering first love, a con artist, a tailor with a broken heart, and the iceberg itself. 

This could have been a disaster almost as bad as the Titanic herself! An iceberg with a point of view!?  Poems about how the Captain of the Titanic feels bad!?  Really!?  Yes, really and it’s really, truly good.  Wolf does an excellent job of having a strong set of incredibly well researched characters that feel real and quite different from each other. The well written verse adds a truly emotive level to all the passages and allows for much quicker communication of ideas and feelings, which is vital with such a large cast.  It also helps you feel like you see right into the heart of every character and truly hear their voices.  This book truly captures the monumental importance of a tragedy like the Titanic and makes it a timeless and universal tale of arrogance, love, loss, class, and just about every other major issue facing humans.  A great read for fans of verse novels or anybody looking for something memorable. 

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