Swan Song: An Odyssey

Dr. Jessie Drake, in her mid-sixties, following the sudden deaths of her parents and Kat, her partner of twenty years, has fled the Vermont life she has known for decades.

In an effort to escape the oppressive constancy of grief, she accepts a job from an old flame from her residency in New York Citys Roosevelt Hospital, and agrees to assist Ben as the ships doctor on a British liner. Jessie boards in Hong Kong, and, as the Amphitrite sails throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East, cruise ship antics ensue. Jessie is lulled back into a long-ago romance with the ships co-doctor, and both she and her new/old beau become enmeshed with the ships lead (female) singer/entertainer. Among the passengers who fling socialized behavior aside on the high seas: a former Florida beauty queen (Miss Florida Power and Light) on a second honeymoon with her husband, as she causes high-velocity scandal, while juggling onboard affairs with a suicidal golf pro, and a defrocked priest hired as one of the liners gentleman hosts, until she vanishespoof!from the ship off the coast of Portugal . . . As the ship sails through the Gulf of Aden and into a possible hijacking by Somali pirates, Jessie retreats into her lovers journals, written during her final months, journals filled with sketches of potential characters, observations on life and loveas well as drafts of a long new poem in progress, Swan Song, that seems to be about being in love with someone else, someone new. As Jessies grief turns to suspicion about the woman she thought she knew so well, her illumination of the poems meaning begins to lift the constraints of the past and make clear the way toward the future.

My Thoughts: As Jessie begins her journey beyond the grief of her recent years, we join her as she strives to make sense of her life and her loves. In Swan Song, she discovers a series of poems written by Kat, and in trying to make sense of them, she wonders if Kat had had a new love at the end.

Meanwhile, she works on the ship doing medical tasks and meeting new people, some of whom are potential friends and/or lovers.

Can she really move beyond Kat with someone she meets on the journey? Or is she meant to be finding answers to lifes journey, especially the journey that ends with death? Eventually, after a number of events, all of which make her think, she comes to a decision. A contemplative read that earned 4.5 stars.

Lisa Althers latest novel, Swan Song, is the story of a long trip – an odyssey – made by a 60 year old ER doctor, Jessie, attempting to come to terms with the recent death of her partner, Kat. She signs up as part of a medical team on a huge cruise ship traveling around the world. In her weeks on board she meets people and takes part in activities she might not have of interest to her before the cruise. And much of it is life altering.

As a reader and reviewer, I had a bit of trouble rating Swan Song, because after reading it and thinking about it, I realised it is not a conventionally written novel. Alther introduces characters and the doesnt follow up. She leaves some red herrings out there and the reader is left wondering what happens. But then I remembered that much of life is exactly like that. We meet people, interact with them, and then move after the proverbial cruise is over.

Before she left Vermont to join the cruise, Jessie found some notebooks that Kat – a novelist – had recorded her thoughts while writing her books. In Kats final notebook, written while she was dying of cancer, Jessie found many cryptic messages about her life and loves. Jessie takes the notebooks with her on the long cruise and finally figures out what Kats final thoughts were. With that knowledge, Jessie is able to make some important decisions.

Lisa Alther doesnt write many books. Swan Song is a welcome addition to her list. I hope you enjoy it.

Beginning and well into the second half, Alther is having a field day celebrating the lunacies of a crazy-quilt of characters aboard a luxury cruise ship. Chief among them is Gail, a former trophy wife with an impotent old man, she now desperate for a few final flings.
But the high jinks are tempered through the watchful, ruminating protagonist Jessie, the ships doctor, who teeters herself between a final fling and her aging, world-weary, sensible self. The novel is reminiscent of Althers Kinflicks wherein the adventures of her rambunctious young heroine are balanced by the reality of her dying mother.
Funny and poignant, Swan Song confronts mortality above all. This is summed up by one man addressing Jessies quandary: Love and death. Eros and Thanatos, just like Freud said.

I have a hard time deciding just what this book was. A travelogue? A murder mystery? A romance novel? All of these, along with bits of mythology, archeology, paleontology, womans rights, lesbian rights, medicine, history, family drama, opera, poetry……
Im not sure. All I know is I read it continuously until I finished it, and I loved Jessie even with all her foibles and problems. Great
book, memorable characters.

As a fan of Alther’s past fiction and non-fiction I approached this book with a positive bias, and found Swan Song fulfilling my expectations of alternative hilarity and horror. There is a discernable connection between Ginny Babcock’s hilarious adventures and her mother’s horrific illness, and Jessie’s humor in the midst of a cruise ship trip from hell into Somali pirates, norovirus, and bisexual competition for her affections when all she really wants to do is resolve her relationship with her dead partner Kat.

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