Whalefall

The title for this science fiction novel by Daniel Kraus is an actual term used to describe when a whale dies and sinks to great depths. "...their carcasses--known as whale falls--provide a bounty of nutrients for deep water creatures (NOAA)." I would almost call this book speculative fiction rather than science fiction as other reviewers have, since all the descriptions and even--except one which the author calls out in his Notes--are based on experts' and his own research.

The book opens with our protagonist:

"That diver is Jay Gardiner, and you won’t meet a more tortured, resourceful fictional character this summer. At 17, he is reeling from the death of his father, Mitt, a legendary diver and mean drunk who had terminal cancer and drowned himself, his pockets full of diving weights, rather than waiting for death to come to him. Jay is racked by guilt — he was estranged from Mitt when he died — and so he decides to atone by recovering Mitt’s remains from the bottom of Monastery Beach, a dangerous spot off the coast of Monterey, Calif. What is meant to be a quick redemptive dive turns into an epic struggle for survival when a massive whale, swallowing a meal of giant squid, fails to notice the surprise side dish: human teenager. The New York Times  goes on to describe the plot as follows: "The book runs along two tracks. One is a moment-by-moment account of Jay’s battle to escape. As in the survival film “127 Hours,” the clock is ticking; each chapter ominously notes how much oxygen remains in Jay’s tank, an hour’s worth in all. For every positive development (Jay avoids death-by-squid in the whale’s mouth) a new disaster arises (Jay gushes blood from his neck, blows out his eardrums, loses his fins, snaps off one of his teeth, burns his hands on acid and faces possible death from methane poisoning) ... In the second track, interspersed with the first, Jay revisits his past and tries to work through his messy relationship with his father. A revered éminence grise in the Monterey Bay diving community, Mitt was also a disappointed old man who couldn’t hold down a job and spent much of his time lecturing his son and railing against humans’ careless disregard of the ocean and its inhabitants."

I found the formatting very distracting as NPR's Ayesha Rascoe notes in her interview with author Kraus: "I have to ask you about the pace because what I found was some chapters are super short. They're just, like, a sentence. They flash back and forth in time. How did you go about planning the writing for this and the structure of this?" Kraus' reply is "My idea was that I wanted the chapter breaks to feel like gasps for air. And I wanted the reader to constantly be aware of how much air he's losing, you know? The chapter headings are all essentially telling you how much oxygen he has left. So with the short chapters, you're constantly gasping and constantly having to sink, then, back down to the drama. And it alternates between what's going on inside the whale and these flashbacks."

Publishers Weekly calls it a "...gripping sci-fi thriller..." and concludes, "Kraus provides solid nautical science alongside the stretchy coincidences that fuel Jay’s survival. Just on the brink of horror fiction, especially for the claustrophobic, this deep-sea thrill ride will have readers on the edges of their seats."Library Journal's review is  also favorable. " Jay's plight is viscerally intense and claustrophobic, even as he grapples with real and raw emotions that stem from remorse and a need for reconciliation. ...This hard sci-fi thriller is full of cinematic and wild suspense and would be great for fans of Andy Weir, although the tone is far more austere." While Booklist calls it "...a moving character study disguised as a riveting, cinematic survival thriller...it is Jay's constant growth throughout the story that makes this novel shine, allowing its beauty to emerge and leave its mark on all who encounter it."

I, on the other hand found Jay to be an unappealing character who does nothing but whine about his horrible father in the first part of the book and then, struggling to escape his living prison, becomes so philosophical that I found it unbelievable. But clearly I am in the minority so judge for yourself.