Close Quarters

The second volume of William Golding's 'A Sea Trilogy' (sequel to *Rites of Passage*), this novel continues the voyage of Edmund Talbot's journal. Becalmed halfway to Australia in a wilderness of heat, stillness, and sea mists, a ball is held on the ship in a surreal, fête-like atmosphere while thickets of weed spread ominously over the hull. As the leaky, unsound vessel lingers, the passengers and crew become 'half-mad with fear, with drink, with love and opium,' feeling themselves 'going to pieces' until the very planks of the ship seem to twist themselves alive as the ship begins to come apart at the seams in a nightmarish climax.

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