Pod: SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

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Ea has always felt like an outsider. As a spinner dolphin who has recently come of age, she's now expected to join in the elaborate rituals that unite her pod. But Ea suffers from a type of deafness that prevents her from mastering the art of spinning. When catastrophe befalls her family and Ea knows she is partly to blame, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave the pod. Sumptuous, richly detailed, chilling and ingenious, Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait boldly reveals from the start that its 15-year-old protagonist is going to be murdered. Set against the male power and politics of Renaissance Italy, this is the story of Lucrezia, a young woman with spirit and intelligence who is forced into a marriage and refuses to be subdued by her husband Alfonso, Duke of Ferrari. None of us could put this immaculate masterpiece down. Ea has always felt like an outsider. She suffers from a type of deafness that means she cannot master the spinning rituals that unite her pod of spinner dolphins. When tragedy strikes her family and Ea feels she is partly to blame, she decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and leave. Please note that this is not an easy story to read. This is not anthropomorphism for amusement or comic effect. It is far from that. While this novel isn’t a lengthy story, it is a heavy one. It ventures into dark territory with instances of violence, assault, descriptions of mass casualties of marine animals and much more. An astonishing and immersive new novel, Pod takes the reader into the depths of the ocean—and into the world of its fascinating inhabitants—through the eyes of the beautiful Ea, a spinner dolphin.

My thanks to Little, Brown Book Group UK for an advanced copy via Netgalley of Laline Paull's 'Pod', in exchange for an honest review. These relationships are conveyed with just the right amount of grit in the oyster; a thoroughly amoral remora attaches itself to Ea and can read her conscious thoughts. She hates and can’t get rid of him, but he can also tell her about life outside the archipelago, and correct her on the important, to him, distinction between a parasitic and commensal relationship. The relations between different species are so rich, probably because they each really do feel like people, albeit people in wildly different cultures and settings. Moray eels with small, wise eyes see everything but commit almost nothing. A wrasse fish completes a bizarre and ecstatic sex change as the whole ocean becomes a euphoric, gamete-soaked moil on the Spring full moon. And, crucially, the violent misogyny of the tursiops feels as real as in any human society. The male ruler’s consort, Devi, quietly exercises her power over the female tursiops both to maintain her position and to mitigate, for her allies, the practical deficiencies of a culture where the male leader cannot be seen to be weak. Devi, the first-wife of Lord Ka, is a difficult, hard-nosed enabler of male violence whose world is upended by Ea, who simply doesn’t get how it works.* Devi and Ka use ‘divide and conquer’ to manage factions and harems, and heap seemingly inevitable violence and neglect onto their megapod’s ‘peripherals’. Even such details as how they ration a pain-relieving soporific along strictly hierarchical lines ring very true. These are animals acting as we have seen animals act, but within a more densely politico-cultural frame of interpretation than we are used to. Notwithstanding the above, the single most irritating description in the book (and there are many contenders for that award) was the author’s frequent referencing of the sea creatures as “people”. As Ea ventures into the vast, she discovers dangers everywhere, from lurking predators to strange objects floating in the water. But just as she is coming to terms with her solitude, a chance encounter with a group of arrogant bottlenoses will irrevocably alter the course of her life.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

As well an an over-arching storyline of love, family and being a dolphin with a difference, Pod covers topics of human-induced degradation of the ocean ecosystem. Many of these I studied for my degree so was particularly poignant for me to imagine those processes through the eyes of the ocean inhabitants. The ocean is such a beautiful, intricately connected web and we are really messing things up! In this book, as well as a dolphin, I have been a clam, a remora and a sea anemome, to name a few. As Ea ventures into the vast, she discovers dangers everywhere, from lurking predators to strange objects floating in the water. Not to mention the ocean itself seems to be changing; creatures are mutating, demonic noises pierce the depths, whole species of fish disappear into the sky above. Just as she is coming to terms with her solitude, a chance encounter with a group of arrogant bottlenoses will irrevocably alter the course of her life. The story is engaging. Life in the oceans is threatened, and the rituals and practices of thousands of years are no longer protection against man-made destruction. It’s a story for our times.

I can’t imagine the amount of research the author had to do to get all of the incredible details in this book right. I particularly liked that the author made sure to include the scenes that depicted rape as marine mammals, especially dolphins, are known to do this so much. Beautifully written and unusual . . . A brave and original story that highlights our modern environmental crimes, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the intricacies of bee world' Sunday Times It was rotting and he guessed its mother had stayed beside her little one, until she could no longer bear it. Or the sharks came. And yet … there were also many sharks caught in the veil of death.” She is taken by force into the megapod of 500 bottlenose dolphins, the Tursiops, the same dolphins that usurped her tribe. The dolphins are much bigger than Ea and she is easily captured by a teenage group. She is raped but makes some alliances within the hareem. This pod is large, noisy and the members are controlled through patriarchal bullying and violence. For example, here is the excitement of the hunt with the bottlenose dolphins. Thought provoking. The dramas of the ocean are played out in a perfectly compiled plot and, as you’d expect, the beauty of the underwater is vividly and sensitively written. It’s another conversation starter. The Belefast Telegraph

Pod by Laline Paull

Each pod has pride and virtue, each feels above the other. They do not know they share one fatal flaw: they think they know this ocean.” I found myself in a magical underworld and I was in awe. I appreciate all the research that Paull conducted for this book as I learnt so much. The ramora fish disgusted yet fascinated me! The effects of the dreamfish was mesmerising.

It would also have worked better for me if Ea had been a little more interesting herself. Mostly she’s indignant or guilty and, I GET IT, as that’s my general state of being, but I don’t think she achieved her potential. Or if she did, she did it off-screen, after the end credits.It is appropriate to mourn the losses, who really knows what it must be like to be a marine animal living in an environment that has been so compromised by a species that lives on land, that continually exploits, pollutes and disregards the fragile biosphere within which they dwell. This is a rich, strange book...convincing in its portrayal of the mind-set of a bee and a hive. I finished it feeling I knew...how bees think and live. This is what sets us humans apart—our imagination can...create a complete, believable world so different from our own." Tracy Chevalier Pod is a work of inspired genius, set in the ocean, from within pods of dolphins, we see the ocean as the world, peopled by different species that as their environment changes, change their habits and behaviours towards others species. Each pod has pride and virtue, each feels above the other. They do not know they share one fatal flaw: they think they know this ocean" The scenes are never graphic and certainly not gratuitous; only enough detail is given to make you understand what’s happening, no more. It’s upsetting, because it’s supposed to be, but it’s not lingered upon unnecessarily. Dolphins can be arseholes. They’ve been known to rape each other. Paull didn’t sanitise this, and she wrote it in a sensitive way that also cast parallels on misogyny within human society.

At last the First Harem began to move. Fused into the greater motion and feeling the ocean again, Ea pushed forward alongside Devi [the number one female]. Up ahead was the massive kinetic power of the male alliance and she let it run through her whole body. She had never experienced this in the Longi pod, but here the male energy was so much stronger. Devi glanced across at her and speeded up. Keeping pace, Ea did not even notice. She was focused on the unfamiliar choreography of the Tursiops on the hunt. Her own peopled had never mentioned it and Ea could not help admiring how they constantly shifted into different patterns, a well-practiced team. (173) Creamer, Ella (12 July 2023). "Royal Society of Literature aims to broaden representation as it announces 62 new fellows". The Guardian. Sometimes those behaviours mimic dysfunctional aspects of human societal behaviour, such as those brought about by a system of domination, the use of violence and subjugation to keep the female species in line, making examples of the weak and young, banishing the old. At the same time, their signals become confused by the changing conditions of the ocean, the noise from large ships, pollution, mutations, a general warming and the presence of a large contaminated patch full of micro-plastics. Minchin, who is a broadcaster and writer, said the books on the list were “ambitious and hard-hitting and imaginative, and they take you on an emotional journey that I feel moved by and inspired by”. This is a tale of families, loyalty, survival, sacrifice, and the things that support survival and those that harm the community. Laline PaullAnyway, this is all to say that in 2022 one book swam swiftly through my system leaving no less than two :-0’s in its wake, and merits not just a proper write-up but a strong exhortation to consider getting your hands on a copy for yourself or someone else. On this final weekend before Christmas, I commend to you Pod, by Laline Paull, the most extraordinary, beautiful, dramatic and arresting novel I’ve read this year.