Review of POD by Laline Paull

3 Stars

I came across this unusual novel on the longlist for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction. 

The novel is written from the perspective of various sea creatures including Ea, a spinner dolphin who cannot spin; Google, a captive military-trained bottlenose dolphin; a humpback whale; a humphead wrasse; and a remora which attaches itself to Ea.  Disastrous events bring these characters together.  Though there’s even a love-at-first-sight romance, the focus is on survival as marine lives are threatened “in this warm and fatal ocean filled with metal demons, who drank blood, spewed filth and whose song was sonic torture.” This is not the world of Flipper. 

The purpose of the book is to draw attention to the damage humans are causing to the oceans and the marine life that calls them home.  Reference is made to human activities like offshore drilling, over-fishing, and shark-finning.  Humans are responsible for sound pollution, oil spills, ocean acidification, and toxic waste dumping.  As a consequence, the entire marine ecosystem is being negatively affected:  habitats are degraded, food webs damaged, and the health of sea animals threatened.  There are detailed descriptions of bleached coral reefs (“all that was left of ancient coral cities was white ruin”) and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Sea Of Tamas). 

In sections it seems as if the worst parts of humanity are replicated in bottlenose dolphins.  Among their behaviours are examples of sexual assault, misogyny, drug usage, and violent power struggles.  Is the message that humans have caused cetaceans to “fall into deep depressive states, or become randomly and violently aggressive”?  They resort to abnormal behaviour in order to survive?  (My husband and I have scheduled a dolphin-watching boat tour in the Sado Estuary in Portugal, but I’m now conflicted about the experience.)

Because there are so many characters, it is difficult to emotionally connect to all of them.  The wrasse is a confusing character.  I know that this fish can undergo a sex change and that seems to be what is happening at the end.  Since such transformations are normal, what’s the big deal?  It almost seems like the author wanted to include a transgender character?  The remora, or suckerfish, is likewise confusing.  At times he seems to serve as comic relief? 

The message of the book is important.  Just as no one wants to heed the warning song of the Rorqual, humans are also deniers, wanting to “continue to enjoy the bounty of life, refusing to worry.”  Unfortunately, as imaginative as this novel is, it comes across as muddled and chaotic.  The anthropomorphism doesn’t work for me.