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A review by steller0707
Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
4.0
The German ship, called the Vera, is making a trip from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany, carrying first class passengers of various citizenship and an "underclass" of prisoners, revolutionaries and the poor. Katherine Anne Porter modeled the novel after her observations on an ocean trip she took in 1931.
The cast of characters is somewhat large, and although there was a list at the front of the book, I found making my own list with a few more notes on each helped to keep them straight at first. But Porter's prose is so vivid it gives life to each one and soon the list was not necessary. I felt like I knew them.
But it's not warm, fuzzy feelings, though. Ethnic prejudices and class snobbery are all too evident throughout the novel: the condescension of first class toward the steerage travelers, the nationalism of the German travelers, and the public ostracizing of the Jews. Young readers may wonder, knowing the horrors of World War II to come, how such blatant talk could have been so common. In this regard, the "Ship of Fools" might be read as a cautionary tale.
The cast of characters is somewhat large, and although there was a list at the front of the book, I found making my own list with a few more notes on each helped to keep them straight at first. But Porter's prose is so vivid it gives life to each one and soon the list was not necessary. I felt like I knew them.
But it's not warm, fuzzy feelings, though. Ethnic prejudices and class snobbery are all too evident throughout the novel: the condescension of first class toward the steerage travelers, the nationalism of the German travelers, and the public ostracizing of the Jews. Young readers may wonder, knowing the horrors of World War II to come, how such blatant talk could have been so common. In this regard, the "Ship of Fools" might be read as a cautionary tale.