Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
The Ghost from the Grand Banks is the Arthur C. Clarke novel about competing 2012 expeditions to raise the wreck of the Titanic. The premise sounds like a thriller hook and the execution is anything but. Clarke is more interested in the engineering of how you would actually do this, in the mathematicians and their fractal-research subplot, and in the quiet way the centennial of the sinking has been gathering meaning across his characters' lives.
The book is structurally odd. Multiple plot threads run in parallel and most of them only partially converge. The math-subplot, involving the Mandelbrot set, is one of the most enjoyable digressions in late-Clarke, but it has only a tangential relationship to the Titanic narrative.
Three stars. Strange in places, charming in places, not Clarke's strongest. Recommended to readers who have already read 2001 and Rendezvous with Rama and want something quieter.
Related reads
If you liked The Ghost from the Grand Banks
The Hammer Of God
by Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke's 1993 asteroid-impact novel. Late-period Clarke at his most readable and his most quietly worried.
The Light Of Other Days
by Arthur C. Clarke
The Light of Other Days by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter 2000 review. Wormhole technology lets anyone look anywhere, anytime. The end of privacy and the end of secret history arrive in the same decade.
Cradle
by Arthur C. Clarke
Cradle by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee 1988 review. A retired Navy diver in Key West stumbles onto a Trident missile recovery operation and an alien artifact older than Earth.
The Trigger
by Arthur C. Clarke
The Trigger by Arthur C. Clarke and Michael Kube-McDowell 1999 review. A field that detonates all chemical explosives within range arrives in a near-future America. The Second Amendment debate gets a hardware upgrade.
11/22/63
by Stephen King
11/22/63 by Stephen King 2011 review. An English teacher discovers a portal to 1958 and decides to stop the Kennedy assassination. The single best late-King novel and the rare time-travel book that earns its 849 pages.
Klara and the Sun
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro 2021 review. Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches the children passing by the storefront and waits to be chosen. Late-career Ishiguro at his most patient and most strange.
More by this author