July 13, 2023
Random Acts… Humanity’s challenges reflected in ‘The Endless Vessel’
Are you happy? What would you do to grasp happiness, or joy? What would happen if you lost your ability to feel joy?
In a world not far in the future, humanity is challenged by a “depression plague” called “the Grey” that has no cure. Lily Barnes, a young Hong Kong-based materials engineer, struggles with the emotional fallout of a father who died years ago, and is doing her best to avoid getting infected by the plague. But when she is given an object that calls to her heart, she cannot turn away from taking an incredible journey through space and time.
In the 1789, Molly Calder loses her husband to a brain aneurysm, and wonders if she will ever be happy again, until she decides to explore the nature of death itself, hoping to bring her husband’s spirit back to life. She creates a ship that goes on to sail the seven seas, and that centuries later, draws Lily to its decks.
A thought-provoking novel that combines a near-future dystopian mystery with historical fiction, “The Endless Vessel” by Charles Soule (Harper Perennial/Harper Collins Publishers, 456 p.) will take you on a page-turning journey about what it means to be human.
On one level, the book explores society’s struggle to find connection and work together for a better world.
You can’t help but think about the partisan divide that plagues our nation (and the world) today. How can we connect with others when we think our perspective is the only correct one? If depression is anger turned inward, what do we do when that anger explodes outward?
On another level, the novel explores every person’s struggle to find connection and love.
The emotional journey that Lily takes is one that every daughter (or son) who has lost a parent – to death or abandonment – will relate to. Lily’s anger and fear, mixed with hope and love, leads her to the understanding that we all need other people… that we can’t go through life alone.
As the author writes, “ ‘The Endless Vessel’ is an adventure. It is a voyage, it is a treasure hunt, and a quest. This story started with a remarkably simple idea, an image I couldn’t shake – a ship that never stopped sailing, on a non-stop, centuries-long voyage. That’s the literal interpretation of the title, and we see that ship in the story.
“The more figurative version is that it’s about us – we are all endless vessels, constantly seeking to fill ourselves with experience, love, and the most important, elusive quality of all… happiness. Joy, even. Our souls are endless vessels. Humanity itself is an endless vessel.”
Here’s to getting in touch with that endless vessel…
Dinah Eng 