The Girl of the Sea of Cortez

Rating:
Summary: EXCELLENT BOOK!
Review: THIS IS DEFINATELY PETER BENCHELY'S BEST BOOK EVER IT WAS EXCITING THOUGHOUT. IF EVERY BOOK WAS WRITTEN WITH THIS MUCH COMPASSION THEN REVIEWS AND CRITIC WOULD NOT BE NECCESSARY BECAUSE IT WOULD BE COMMON KNOWALAGE THAT ALL BOOKS WOULD BE OF GREAT QUALITY.

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding look at the raw beauty of the ocean and life!
Review: When I first began this book, I expected the usual Benchley fare: killer sea creatures, blood, blood, and more blood. What I actually got astounded me. Peter Benchley has used his infinite knowledge of the ocean, its teeming life, and our own feelings toward it to create a powerfully raw look at the human psychological connection with Nature and her creations. While it may not be life-changing material, it is definitely life-enhancing. I know I will never look at the ocean and her beauty the same way again. From the beginning of the novel, Benchley establishes the powerful connection between man and the sea; both the beauty we should see in it as well as the devastation we reek upon it are explored in wonderfully grand, often horrifying detail. From the moment I met father and daughter and began to understand his teachings, from the moment I began to understand brother's (man's?) feelings toward the ocean and its life as undeniably ignorant and unfounded, from the moment I read the unforgettable climax, I knew this was no ordinary novel; this, for me at least, was indeed life-changing stuff. While the ocean has always been a place of solitude and peace for me, I now view it as a wondrous, perfect community, one which puts our own to shame. Read The Girl of the Sea of Cortez, if not to better your own understanding of our relationship to the sea, then to at least have a better understanding of what we should be passing on to our own children. If you walk away from this novel without a sense of pride, without a sense of the overwhelming beauty of the sea, without the sense that your life has been somehow altered, then you obviously need to start it all over again. Mr. Benchley, many thanks to you for putting together and sharing with the world such an amazing story. You have no doubt opened many minds with your beautiful words, making the world all that much better a place to be.