Earthshaker: The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico (1969)

There are minor spoilers in this post so please consider yourself warned.

Then why did hope persist? Why this upward striving, this eternal climbing by himself and these ill-assorted people, castaways in a floating tomb, the odds on whose chances for rescue were astronomical?

A group of people, herded together because of some natural calamity or man-made trouble is a trope I enjoy a lot. It is interesting to watch the truths come out as the tensions from within and without crack the people apart. Danger can be as much from the external situation as the internal conflicts.

In Paul Gallico’s The Poseidon Adventure, a group of people try to reach safety when the ocean-liner they are travelling in gets hit by a giant wave (tsunami before we knew it to be tsunami) and turns up-side down. Though the novel consists in large part of people trying to climb-up and trying to mount insurmountable obstructions, it is to the credit of the author that he does not let the writing become boring and there were only a few patches where I felt the going tedious and repetitive. Also though I did not find even one character wholly likeable, I still felt for them and wanted them to survive, which is unusual and again to the author’s credit as usually I have to like at least one character to enjoy a book.

The group that tries to make its way atop to the hull are lead by Reverend Frank Scott who reminded me of new-age gurus for whom the universe bends to one’s will. And his rather sadistic-act of kicking away the Christmas tree by which the group had made its way to the kitchens was appalling! I just wish that the poor Italian doctor who could not see without his glasses and would not leave the injured in the dining-hall was among the survivors. Also appalling was how the Shelbys just abandon their plucky little boy. I just can’t imagine parents or siblings doing it and Jane Shelby was the worst of the lot because she made a big hue and cry and abused and humiliated her husband (who at least had the decency to not throw the fact that she was responsible for the little boy back in her face) and yet citing the excuse that she owed more to the living, left the child.

This was disgusting especially when a steward had refused to leave his colleague because they had been working together for so long and the girl Pamela didn’t leave in lurch her drinking companion Beamer (And I loved the author sly comment: The great and potent deity, Bacchus, had looked after his own again.)

Also thought that the book was a comment on the absurdity of life and the universe. Things are upside down; those we think will survive do not necessarily do so; death and survival doesn’t depend on struggle and striving against odds; heroism, indifference, and even cowardice get all mingled up and the ultimate reward is not what or how we think it is.

All in all an enjoyable human drama set against a ticking-clock. Now I am keen to watch the movies based on it, especially the 1972 one which I have heard good things about. Have you read the book or seen the movies? What are your views?

*

First Line: At seven o’clock, the morning of the 26th day of December, the S.S. Poseidon, 81,000 tons, homeward bound…

First Published: 1969

Publishing Details: London: Pan Books, 1975.

Pages: 335

Other Opinions: JetBlackDragonFly, Obsessive Compulsive Reader

Other Books read by the same author: None