The Boats of the Glen Carrig

- by William Hope Hodgson

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The Boats of The Glen Carrig

The Boats of The Glen Carrig is a short novel by William Hope Hodgson. Despite many flaws including stilted purple prose and inadequate character development, the book has been recognized as a classic of horror. H.P. Lovecraft praised it for its depiction of "malign marvels."

The Glen Carrig is a 18th century sailing vessel that sinks after hitting a hidden rock. The survivors escape in the ship's life boats and after surviving many hardships arrive at an unknown island where they confront attacks by Sea Weed Men and other monsters. Eventually they join forces with the survivors of another ship which has been stranded for 7 years and together the two crews escape back to London. As an aside, if the other survivors had managed to last seven years on the island of the Sea Weed Men, these were some fairly underachieving monsters. Mind you, when all you can do is slap people with your floppy seaweed arms, you can only do so much.

Critics have commented that the novel is difficult to read because of Hodgson's attempt to use archaic language in an effort to recreate how the narrator supposedly would have written the account in his time period. However this produced extremely long and difficult to read sentences. There is no actual dialogue and the characters are generally not well delineated. However the author's description of maritime life and sailing techniques are very vivid because of his own real life experiences in the merchant navy.

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Table of Contents

THE BOATS OF THE 'GLEN CARRIG'
  I
  II
  III
  IV
  V
  VI
  VII
  VIII
  IX
  X
  XI
  XII
  XIII
  XIV
  XV
  XVI
  XVII

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