10. Dead Calm

 By Charles Williams

Olman had been searching for a used copy of Dead Calm for years, and ended up buying himself a new trade paperback.  I realized this was the source for that Aussie thriller with Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman. I remember having watched Dead Calm on VHS in the 90’s and recall parts of it quite clearly, probably due to its streamlined premise and execution. It was a memorable thriller but I never thought to look up the American source novel.

 

What I appreciated most about Charles Williams’ Dead Calm were two things:  its efficient and economical writing style and how refreshingly non-sexist it was (rather unusual for a genre thriller published in 1963).  It also makes the story rather timeless, which is no surprise how well it adapted into a film 25 years later.  The major difference between the book and 1989 film is that the film is even more pared down, as it only features three of the five characters: John, Rae and Hughie.

 

John Ingram is portrayed as an overall competent person; both physically and mentally tough and fairly woke for a fortyish dude of his time.  His beautiful wife Rae, though less worldly, also demonstrates intelligence, courage and perseverance in the face of extreme situations. The older woman, Mrs Warriner, is a flawed yet complex and capable character.  According to John Ingram, she’s worth fifty of the other two men in the book, who embody some of the worst traits of masculinity, from extreme immaturity to toxic narcissism. They are exactly the kind of people you don’t want to be trapped with on a boat in the middle of the ocean, whether it’s in danger of sinking or not!

 

My only complaint is how the narrative is structured, or not structured. The pacing is quick from the get-go. The first chapter introduces Rae and Ingram alone on their honeymoon aboard the Saracen, and within the first chapter, the third character is also introduced.  This is obvs not a character-driven story, but still, a bit of setup would’ve been nice.

 

Then when Ingram boards the Orpheus and discovers the two people, Hughie takes off with Rae, who then becomes captive on the Saracen, leaving Ingram and the others stranded on the slowly sinking Orpheus. This is when the narrative is split between the occupants aboard the Orpheus and Saracen with the POV shifting between the characters on each boat as they struggle to overcome their obstacles.

 

The conventional method would be to organize the POV into separate chapters, or into sections within a chapter. However, the POV shifts seamlessly from one paragraph to the next and there is nothing in the text to distinguish each POV shift, not even a single line space to signal that a POV change had occurred.  At least, this is the case in the Overlook Duckworth 2014 trade paperback edition that I was reading from.

 

It was so disconcerting that I wondered if it was done on purpose to confuse the reader? I mentioned it to Olman and he had noticed too, though he claimed he got used to it after a while.  When I tried to look for an example of this odd editing choice online, I discovered that the pdf version I found used *** to demarcate the POV shifts!!!

 

Example: https://100vampirenovels.net/pdf-novels/dead-calm-by-charles-williams-free/17-page

 

So now I’m wondering if the lack of section demarcations was a printing error with this edition?

It does make you realize how bad formatting can have a detrimental effect on one’s reading experience.  But it didn’t detract too much from my overall enjoyment of Dead Calm.