Reissued by Penguin to take advantage of the Kurt Russell film POSEIDON is Paul Gallico’s 1969 thriller THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, the basis for both the current remake and the Oscar-winning 1972 Irwin Allen spectacle. The new film immediately capsized at the box office, but the novel – which, I’ll admit, I didn’t realize even existed – lives on (and with an awesome cover utilizing poster art from Allen’s film and its ultra-cool logo).
After introducing us to little more than a dozen on 500 passengers aboard a Christmas voyage of the S.S. Poseidon, Gallico doesn’t waste any time getting things moving. By page 27, this ship has flipped! A seaquake triggers a rock slip, sending forth a giant wave that does to the cruise liner what is thought to be impossible: turn it upside-down. Most of the crew and passengers are killed instantly, but those few who survive would rather not go down toward an icy grave once a final lurch arrives to sink the craft, so they gamely brave their way up toward Poseidon’s hull, where they hope to be rescued.
At first disoriented by the topsy-turvy obstacle course the ship’s interior has become – simple flights of stairs now serve no useful purpose – the survivors encounter more troubled spots along the way, which will test their might, tax their bodies and strip them of all their clothes. (Gallico seems to delight in numerous descriptions of the women having to shed their party dresses and unhook their bras.)
Sometimes the scenarios can be difficult to envision, as Gallico digs into details a bit too much. But if you discard your need for spatial acclimatization, you can easily go along for the ride. This is a fine, old-fashioned adventure; I may have handpicked the first person whose death we witness, but the second was a total surprise. The author’s word usage may be dated, but that’s to your benefit when it contains such phrases as “like a Midway cooch grinder.” I’m more bothered an out-of-nowhere rape scene – made even more awkward by its victim’s reaction – and racist statements of one character that Gallico doesn’t necessarily go out of his way to discount.
Near the end, the book becomes less about thrills and more about emotions, but that doesn’t make it any less readable. Gallico’s ADVENTURE is an adventure as promised, an aged but still fully functioning novel about a disaster that isn’t a disaster at all. –Rod Lott
“He felt her lips searching his face for his mouth and when they found it, they were soft, smelling and tasting of sugar biscuits and sticky with apricot jam. But with the hungry pleading touch with which they fastened upon his, she simultaneously gave him her life and her death. In the next moment they were joined.”
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When I read this years back I was kind of taken aback by several “plot twists/character revelations” at the end. The book in many ways was more in the Arthur Hailey soap opera behind the scenes mode than the Scortia/Robinson (THE GLASS INFERNO) disaster unfolds genre.
Still it is leaps and bounds beyond BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (where the book and movie are closer related … and both obviously solely done for the $$$$)
I’ll grant you there are some soapy moments at the end, with the way the rape situation ties up being absoultely bizarre. The novel is very much a product of its time in terms of attitudes, but as an engaging story, I think it has aged well.
Just be thankful Rod you did not have to endure that awful song The Morning After.
There’s also the neat twist in the book that our intrepid pantheon of survivors are not the only ones to survive … as they are being rescued they notice there are thirty other survivors being helped at the other end of the ship, allowing the passing thought “gee, was there an easier way … and would more of us (including the little kid who doesn’t make it in the book) be alive if we hadn’t followed OUR leader.”
Nicely bitter.