The Last Cruise

March 1, 2018

PEN/Faulkner Award winner Christensen takes us on the final voyage of the 1950s-era ocean liner Queen Isabella, as guests nostalgically enjoy retro drinks and luscious jazz, with both cell phones and children banned. Belowdecks, tensions simmer among the crew, some of whom know the ship is creakier than it looks.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 28, 2018
This sly novel from Christensen (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award for The Great Man) begins as a casual romp and then heads inexorably into darker territory. Embarking from California on the final voyage of an ocean liner that first hit the seas in the 1950s are former journalist and current Maine farmer Christine, aging Israeli violinist Miriam, and troubled Hungarian cook Mick. As Christine lounges in the sun and observes the other passengers, Miriam prepares to play a complicated piece with the other members of her string quartet and Mick copes with growing conflicts among the members of the kitchen staff. When a strike by the staff coincides with increasingly serious problems with the mechanics of the ship, the cruise quickly loses its luster. The three central characters and half a dozen others are clearly developed as Christensen integrates their personal stories into the microcosm of the onboard society. While the author’s attempts to keep the boat isolated from contact with the outside world sometimes strain credulity, and her careful parcelling out of romantic difficulties seems less than organic, the book steadily gains power as the boat loses its, and the portrayal of a small society on the edge of chaos is haunting. Christensen has crafted a Ship of Fools for an era of environmental concerns and social unrest.

June 15, 2018
Christensen (How to Cook a Moose, 2015, etc.) chronicles the intersecting human tragicomedies above- and belowdeck during a luxury liner's farewell Hawaiian cruise.Commissioned back in 1953, the Queen Isabella has had a long sea life. But now the corporate owners have arranged her farewell adults-only cruise with a glamorous mid-20th-century retro theme. In fact, the Queen Isabella is a little too retro, with drab '70s-era staterooms and a pool considered tiny by today's standards. Christensen writes with tenderness but no sentimentality about the old ship and about aging human characters, too. Having played together for more than 40 years, the elderly members of the Sabra String Quartet--Miriam; Isaac, her co-founder and ex-husband; Jakov; and Sasha, "the one she'd always had a crush on"--know they are nearing the end of their run. Based in Israel, the quartet is aboard to debut a work called "The Six Day War" composed by fellow passenger Rivka Weiss, whose wealthy husband owns a share in the ship. Crotchety and kind, sometimes both at once, Miriam is the novel's strongest character, expressing the quicksilver nature of human emotions: Even as her passion for Sasha re-erupts into a full-blown septuagenarian love affair, she finds herself distracted by her scratchy yet deep familial love for Isaac. Miriam befriends 36-year-old Christine, a hardworking Maine farmer's wife whose successful journalist friend Valerie is on a working vacation. Luxuriating in food, drink, and warm weather, Christine re-examines her life choices while Valerie, who's paying for their room, tries gathering information on the ship's uncooperative crew for her "book about workers." Belowdeck, executive sous chef Mick is caught between his sense of professional duty and a multicultural staff in revolt against horrible working conditions. Then the ship's engines fail, along with its electricity and plumbing. While Miriam dryly jokes about icebergs, what's begun as an idyll at sea, at least for the passengers, becomes a crisis. Soon divisions between decks blur and relationships reconfigure.An entertaining mashup of Ship of Fools and Titanic.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 1, 2018
Food is Christensen's muse in her witty memoirs, including How to Cook a Moose (2015), and in her delectable novels, a passion brought to boil in this initially wry and ebullient, gradually catastrophic ship-of-fools tale. The Queen Isabella's final voyage to Hawaii is a tribute to its first in 1957, from its vintage decor to dressing for dinner and retro cocktails and cuisine. Christine is thrilled to have escaped the cold and hard work on her farm in Maine to join her New York friend, Valerie, a furiously professional journalist, for a lark. Other passengers include Miriam, a violinist in an ardent Israeli classical quartet whose members have played together ever since they fought in the 1967 Six-Day War. Mick, an ambitious Hungarian sous chef, is hoping for a career boost but finds himself contending with a fierce and intent staff, especially outspoken Consuelo, angered by pending layoffs. Christensen's sharply attentive, brightly articulate characters offer trenchant analysis as the scrumptious pleasures of the cruise give way to heartache and conflict, transforming this luxurious floating world into a veritable prison, adrift with little food and much illness and angst. As the shocking denouement looms, valor, ingenuity, and transcendence arise. Christensen's gripping and insightful novel dramatizes with stealth and daring the dangerous contrariness of human nature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)