How Long Is Adrift: A True Story Of Love, Loss, And Survival At Sea Novel?

The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is an enormous work. At first glance, the novel-sized pile of books on my shelf makes me nervous. Solzhenitsyn wrote a three-volume, historical work of non-fiction about the many Soviet labor camps. As a memoirist, Solzhenitsyn incorporates his own experiences in the camps into his historical account of them. “The Gulag Archipelago” spans over 1,800 pages in English translation, depending on the version. The 3-volume work in English translation that I have includes: 3-volume work in English translation (the 660 pages of the first volume of mine, a paperback from the 1970s, are shown at the left, above); the 3 volumes consolidated into 2 larger volumes (the 712+558 pages of the second and third volumes of mine are shown at the right, above); and the 3 volumes consolidated into one very large book (over 1,800 pages, shown below). One might expect a 1500 page or so historical non-fiction work to be ponderously dull, but not so with Solzhenitsyn’s masterful writing. His memoiristic anecdotes are deftly woven into the larger historical context, to create a novelistic work of stunning length. The physical weight of the three volumes as a whole is almost a symbol in and of itself: the text is a massive, hefty, tomes-like book of incredible, often heart-wrenching, testimony to human suffering and resilience. As I read through the volumes, I finished Volume 1 in a week’s time, over winter break, and felt like I was reading a novel. To the person who fears the vast expanse of this book, I would suggest that you read The Gulag Archipelago as a series of three novels rather than one. Volume I explores the scenes of arrest, the first interrogations, theồng quickest settings of the camps, the965 scenes of the township; Volume II begins with the ushcherba to the camps and follows the immediate struggles of the۱۹ interior once within the camps; and Volume III describes the breakout of the prisoners from the Tổng Ś grads of confinement (their god)939, the(Index-Based3740 internal rebellion and thaع B dad path143 follows600. Honestly, reading this book has taken me months. Perhaps it is best to let each installment sit on a shelf for a few months before reading the next one. At the end of the day, the pages of this very heavy book are completely insignificant. How two men managed to secretly memorize poetry in the face of all that humanity was trying to do to crush it in order to keep their humanity is what makes this book so extremely deep and powerful.

Yes, okay. But then imagine if this were really happening. How awful would that be? Yet this scenario is so easily imaginable and wouldn’t be dependent on zombies or aliens in order to be chilling. It’s based on ‘truth’. In this case the ‘truth’ of the story is the trajectory of our technology-dependent culture. It asks the one serious question about our current situation: what if the thread we’re hanging by were to snap? Yes, the characters and the plot are all fictional but the anxiety, the fear of this happening is 100% genuine. It is of our time. It is plucked straight from the zeitgeist and given a face and a name.

This is not a true story but it was so well done that I didn’t care. It is fiction done right with lots of emotional depth to make you forget it is not real. The author must be very talented because all of the made up moments seemed so real. He must have done a great job with the pacing and dialogue because this book has stuck with me even after finishing it.

I get to count front matter and back matter, right? So that means the copyright page and the dedication and the table of contents and the author's note and the preview of the next book all count as well. That's another 20 pages or so of non-story. An ebook lists all locations of a book, so a book of 350 locations is 350 'pages' of story. But in reality, that only translates to 320 pages of actual written story, not 350. This is one of my bugaboos when judging a book by its length. I have to flip to the start of Chapter 1 and the end of the book's last Chapter to get a true story length. Some publishers are better than others at counting up the actual number of story pages in a book of a given page length. For example, a 380-page hardcover might only contain 350 pages of written story. It's a small difference, but one that matters to the truly page-count-conscious.

My copy is 384 pages long but a thriller is a book that is usually devoured within a few days by fans of the genre and so this book was a ‘spot of trouble’ and I had devoured it within two days (despite the short chapters which read very quickly and were ideal for a late night reading binge) reading it until sunrise the next day as I kept saying to myself ‘just read this one chapter’.

This song was another that I instantly Googled to see if it was written from real life experience. The lyrics of ‘I Get to Love You’ by Ruelle are so tender and so precise that it’s almost as if she’s drawing a memory from her past and locking it in a song. We have yet to hear her talk about the inspiration for this song but it clearly has to be from real life experience. The line “I get to love you” is sung repeatedly and it’s almost as if the protagonist is repeating a mantra to themselves of the way in which they feel so lucky to be able to love their other half. It’s cool because it’s ambiguous. It doesn’t matter if it’s her story or not. Her writing of a love so pure it’s almost as if you could create a movie with this song. It makes me think of a couple’s wedding vows or even late at night when you’re awake and you can realize just how lucky you are to have that other person in your life. It’s the kind of song that is true whether it’s her story or not, which is why I think it’s an amazing piece of art.

318 pages in the first hardcover edition of this book, according to my last night’s shelf re-organizing. Large enough to immerse you in reading and yet you wouldn’t even notice how many pages there are in it – till the middle sections (ca. 120-180 pages) slightly lag behind, but believe me – it’s worth perseverance! This book was initially planned by its author as a novella but then the characters developed so much that he ended up enlarging it to this current volume size – and it does breathe! (Literally, I hadn’t intended to use this word).

No single “true” story here. But so much historical truth woven in that it stands as testimony to the truth. Hannah has not made up a war. Instead she placed fictional characters within the tumultuous historical time frame of the Vietnam War. Real settings. Real battles. Real medical restrictions. Real political division. The real element of Frankie’s journey through this fictionalized landscape is the fictional part itself. Think of a super-accurate diorama of a historical event. Now imagine placing a compelling, scripted documentary drama inside it. The diorama is fact; the drama is fiction, designed to most effectively show you the diorama containing the historical fact to make access to history as easy and as moving as possible.

Have you ever read The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach? Although it is fiction, it reads so much like real life and has such incredible baseball lore in it. I found the struggles that the characters experienced trying to achieve perfection, and failing in it were so like real athletes. Then there is the incredible nonfiction of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit, too). Louie Zamperini, the Olympic track star and World War II survivor, is simply unbelievable. He is truly one of the greatest examples of sportsmanship I have ever read about. Finally, The Breaks of the Game by David Halberstam is amazing nonfiction about the early days of the NBA in the turbulent 1970s. You read this book as if you are actually sitting courtside at the games.

This is a miniature compared to his larger works of fiction (i.e. ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ runs to 800 pages or so). But for me White Nights is even more wonderful than that. Because White Nights is Dostoevsky concentrated to their utmost extent – all the major Dostoevsky themes are there in the SPACE given to them for the exploration of alienation and of obsessive idealistic love of an “impossible” sort and of THE most painful sort of awareness of Self that there is. It can be read in two hours. In fact, I read it on a train journey – and sat for the remainder of the journey with my head pressed against the cold window. The ending affected me so very, very much. This tiny work is also of enormous re-readability – for me every 2 years or so. And the major new thing I have noticed each time is the depth, and variousness, of the terribly desperate, romantically-love-struck monologuing of the narrator.