Rush Oh!

It is a nice bitter-sweet story set in the early 20th century. Although i enjoyed it, it was not the most memorable book I have read recently

This book, which has been longlisted for the Bailey's Prize 2016, (that's how it came to catch my eye), is one of my favourite reads of 2016. It tells the story of Mary Davidson, the eldest daughter of a whaling family in Australia in the early years of the twentieth century. She has written an illustrated memoir of the whaling season of 1908. In fact the illustrations are one of my favourite things about this book, lending it a charm and a sense of realism that really tug at your heart strings. The story she tells is funny and heart breaking, and romantic and poetic, and oh so beautifully written. It really is a book to savour. 1908 is a difficult whaling season, because there just aren't many whales that make the men shout, "Rush Oh" (the call that the men use to alert everyone to the arrival of a right whale in the bay. (They are called "right" whales because they are the right whales for catching. Then John Beck arrives in town, and asks for a job on the whale ship as oarsman. He has a mysterious past. Mary is soon besotted and bewitched by him. However, is he really who he pretends to be? Actually, what I have written makes this book sound like a romantic mystery story, but it's so much more than that. It's a delightful, deftly written tale of what it really felt like to depend on the whales for your livelihood, and along the way snippets of history are dropped lightly into the story - drawn from real newspaper cuttings, so that you get the feeling what you are reading could be non-fiction. Rush Oh! is a beautifully crafted account of a time when a family of fishermen formed a relationship with a pod of killer whales. One of the most memorable characters in the book, in fact, is the killer whale named Tom. The acknowledgements tell how you can go and see his bones in a museum of whaling in Australia. This museum is now on my wish list of places to visit! This beguiling little book made me laugh and cry.

Found it hard going!

Loved this book - full of likeable characters and beautifully written. The narrators humourous dialogue and observations kept me reading what could have been a fairly tame read. Some graphic descriptions of whaling, but really this is more of a family story. Would recommend.

I don't normally write book reviews, but I enjoyed this book so much I just had to. It is a delight to read a book without murders, psychopaths and bad language. It is an account of whaling off the Australian coast in the very early 20th century based on true accounts from the local paper. It is full of fascinating facts about thel lives of the community and, of course the whaling. It is written from the perspective of the eldest daughter of the whaling captain, who has an enormous amount of responsibility for everything domestic.

Rush Oh! tells the (partly fictionalised) story of the Davidson family of Eden, who used to hunt whales, using killer whales as "attack dogs" to help take down the larger whales in a fascinating bit of mutualism. The story, told by Mary, switches between historical account of whaling and life in Eden, and the whimsical stories of a sweet nineteen year old in love. A richly historical book with a sweet and lovely plot. Thank you to Virago for sharing a copy with me to read.

A sweet tale if you are interested in a bit of whaling history in Australia, I wasn’t really ! A little boring.

I didn’t know what to expect from ‘Rush Oh!’ Whaling is frowned on these days and somewhat gory. But I am so pleased I read it. Shirley Barrett has drawn a setting which comes alive. Australia, New South Wales, 1908. It is the story of Mary Davidson, the daughter of a whaler, it is her memoir of one year in her family’s rural life at Eden. It is not simply a story about whaling. The historical context is so rich, so believable. The first page introduces the vivid setting: Mary’s home with its scent of boiling blubber for five months of the year, the rib cage of a 90ft blue whale sits in the front garden surrounded by jonquils, and a footpath laid with the pulverised vertebrae of whales. In this house in Eden lives Mary with siblings and their widowed father, the famous whaler George Davidson. During the whaling season her father’s whaling crew also live with the family and Mary and her sister cook meals and do the laundry. It is a hard life, harder when the whales do not appear in the bay and the general store will not further extend the credit line. Into this scene walks John Beck, former Methodist minister, offering his services as an oarsman. So this is a family story, a whaling/nature story, and a tale of teenage love. George Davidson is a true character, his exploits were recorded in the local newspapers of the time and whale skeletons are on display at the Eden Killer Whale Museum. The ‘Author’s Note’ explains how Barrett combined history with invention in the writing of Mary’s memoir. As it is a memoir we know Mary is writing it years after the events she depicts, and there are hints of what may befall Mary and her family after the book has finished. The last two chapters are set later in her life and fill in some of the gaps. I don’t like gory stories and don’t like whaling, but I found the story fascinating. Man v Beast fighting for survival, with an added twist: the whaling crew is aided in its hunt of the right whales by a group of Killer whales. Any catch is shared between men and killers. Again, factually correct. So, a story of Man + Beast interacting for the benefit of both. Oh, and I loved the illustrations too. An unusual novel, but definitely worth a try.

Good book, new information about life in the turn of the century whaling history.

This book delighted me in so many ways. The author uses one of the daughters of an actual prominent whaling family, the Davidsons, based in the port of Eden around the turn of the twentieth century to narrate the story. She combines a maturity and intelligence beyond her teenage years with a wry sense of humour which is quite unpredictable and insightful. Some readers may find the depiction of whaling distasteful, but one must see it in relation to the mores and morality of those hard times. These were not like today's heartless profiteers who slaughter great animals with cannon-fired explosive missiles, but brave men in small rowing boats pitting themselves against an often hostile sea, hunting with hand-thrown harpoons and lances to earn a modest living. The small number that they killed in any year would have had little or no effect on the whale population. For me, the most fascinating and absolutely true aspect of the story was the symbiotic relationship between the whalers and a pod of highly intelligent Killer Whales that had learned to shepherd their larger cousins into Twofold Bay for the whalers to harpoon. The killers would have first 'dibs' on the carcass and the whalers would take the vast bulk of the catch after their allies had finished feeding. But it is the anecdotes and characters in the story that make it so readable. It certainly isn't a romance although the overtones are there, nor does the actual killing of whales occupy much of the narrative. It is much more about the lives and livelihoods of people living off the sea at a subsistence level, with little in the way of the comforts and conveniences that we take for granted, at a time when people depended on whale oil to light their lamps and whalebone to assist ladies in achieving classic 'hourglass' figures.

Great insight into whaling in the early 1900's

Excellent novel written from the point of view of the 19 year-old daughter of a whaling family in 1908 Australia. Based on the true story of "fearless" George Davidson and his whaling crew working in Twofold Bay. Characters are fully fleshed out against the backdrop of George's whaling crew working with Killer whales to capture the large humpbacks and black whales as they made their journey south.

Living on the South Coast of NSW I was really interested to read a book about our area. The descriptions of whaling were gruesome but a fact of the times, and the lives and life stories of the characters reflected the lives of that generation of Australians. It had a Ruth Park authenticity. Loved the small illustrations and quotes from the local paper.