Review
This trilogy comprises Rites of Passage (1980; Booker Prize), Close Quarters (1987), and Fire Down Below (1989) and has an introduction by the Nobel Prize-winning author. Together they tell of a voyage on an English ship bound for Australia in the early 19th century. Edmund Talbot, the brash young narrator, begins the books at the behest of his powerful godfather, whose patronage he enjoys and who has secured him a governmental post in the far-off colony. Together the books represent an extraordinary bildungsroman, as the title of the first suggests. Talbot is an imperious, self-contented snob as the trilogy begins on board a rickety old craft: but for the first time in his life he is thrown into daily contact with all manner of people, from a wide social spectrum. Confined as his narrator is, Golding succeeds in showing him the world and as storms rage and human tragedy and comedy unfold, Talbot's journey becomes spiritual and moral. Golding's characterization is acute and concise: the boat's fearsome captain is portrayed as convincingly as the meanest passenger. Golding's own experience at sea is evident in his descriptions of storms and near-sinkings, and the skill with which he conveys the atmospheres and rumours which spread through those who live, work and eat in such close proximity. The detail is always precise, the tension extraordinary; and the whole is a magnificent achievement. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
This is a one-volume edition of the sequence of three novels set in the early 19th century, about a sea voyage from England to Australia. "Rites of Passage" won the Booker Prize.
