Excerpt from The Homecoming, by Anna Enquist, translated by Eileen Stevens

An internationally bestselling, award-winning novel that explores the passions and sorrows of the wife of eighteenth-century explorer Captain James Cook.

The Homecoming

by Anna Enquist

Translated by Eileen Stevens

After twelve years of marriage to English explorer James Cook, Elizabeth has yet to spend an entire year with her husband. In their house by the Thames, she moves to the rhythms of her life as a society wife, but there is so much more to her than meets the eye. Whilst managing the house and garden and raising their children, Elizabeth faces unbearable sorrows alone.

As she prepares for another homecoming, Elizabeth looks forward to James’ triumphant return the work she will undertake, reading and editing her husband’s voluminous journals. But will the private life she’s been leading in his absence distract her from her role in aid of her husband’s grand ambitions? Can James find the compassion to support her as their family faces unimaginable loss, or must she endure life alone as he sails off toward another adventure?

An intimate and sharply observed novel, The Homecoming is as revelatory as James Cook’s exploration of distant frontiers and as richly rewarding as Elizabeth’s love for her family. Anna Enquist brilliantly narrates Elizabeth’s compelling record of her life, painting a psychological portrait of an independent woman ahead of her time.

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Excerpt from The Homecoming, by Anna Enquist, translated by Eileen Stevens

She’d known for a few weeks that she was pregnant. Everything still fit, and it didn’t show, but she knew. Joy flared up in her like a reflex, but then she felt instantly ashamed and overconfident. It all came down to control. She must fulfill all her duties with serenity and composure. Looking after Nathaniel, paying regular visits to Elly’s grave, poring through James’s journals from cover to cover. It would be no good to withdraw secretly into an alliance with a child who did not yet exist. She couldn’t allow herself any gladness; first she needed to spend the autumn settling back into this house and making peace with its new, unaccustomed order.

James had accepted the appointment at the hospital, but they still lived in their own home. He had someone row him across the river whenever he needed to be on the other side. He was gone much of the time, because the accumulations that had settled in the ship after so many years at sea had to be carefully examined and distributed. The plants and seeds were packed up and shipped to Kew; the sketches of landscapes and tattooed individuals went to the atelier of Hodges, the painter, who converted them into formidable oil paintings; and the knowledge, the residue of the experiences that James had collected in his mind, had to be shared with scientists from various disciplines. He spent his afternoons in one tavern or another, conferring first with geographers and astronomers, then with biologists and physicians. He was so full of fascinating observations and ideas—about the spread of disease and the prevention of sailor mortality; the constellations in the Southern Hemisphere; the social structure of island populations, their religious rituals, their exotic manner of shipbuilding, their clothing or lack thereof—that he felt compelled to pass along that knowledge to other learned minds as soon as he could.

He was met with respect, even admiration. He was given a permanent chair at the meetings of the fellows of the Royal Society.

“Sometimes I almost feel they’re about to stand up and bow when I walk in,” he said. “It’s getting out of hand.”

But it did him good, and he enjoyed the sharp-witted discussions. The adulation didn’t bother him, but he wasn’t crazy about the thrill seeking of some of his associates. He’d return home scowling, and it would be a while before he could unleash his scorn and fury.

“Not a shred of genuine interest. Naked girls, that’s all they’re after. Atrocities and executions. Orgies. They may be aristocrats, schooled at the best universities, but all they want are the spicy details. The trouble is, they don’t know how to think. Or to look. Take Lord Monboddo, for example, a judge, no less—you know the one, with dark hair and those doleful, rheumy eyes—we got to talking this afternoon, but he wasn’t listening. All he wanted to hear was that the islanders are talking apes, because he believes the apes are our forefathers. He twists everything around until it fits his theory. They are people, I said, just like you and me. He backed down, disappointed. I could tell he didn’t believe me.”

James’s busy schedule gave her more time. When he was away, she sat at the table and read his logbooks. She dutifully absorbed the geographical positions, the astronomer’s notes, the weather reports, observations of the sea, its color and surface—and promptly forgot it all. She paid careful attention to the passages in which she could hear James thinking and speaking about the behavior of the crew or the fascinating animals and people who inhabited the other side of the globe.

She was always tense. She couldn’t resist trying to organize the material in the best and most attractive way possible, to give future readers a clear impression of her husband’s genius and courage. But beneath all that, she was afraid, and from time to time, that fear launched its warning signals. But afraid of what?

Disruption, that came the closest. There were times, like this morning, when she stood stock still in the garden and realized that her waistband was tighter than it had been a week ago—she wrapped her arms around her belly, sucked her breath in—and it became clear how hard she had been clinging to the fiction of a joyous homecoming. Not only the idea that everything would be all right, that her loneliness and bravery would of course be lifted and rewarded, but that now, things had to turn out all right. A compelling urgency marked in her the image of a man who, after his wanderings, is finally fulfilled and able to settle down beside the woman who’s been waiting faithfully. She’d held on to that vision for many years, and now it was time for it to become a reality.

Briefly, with her arms folded protectively around the growing infant, she realized that her line of thinking was like a ribbon stretched above reality—a shimmering guideline leading her to a place where everything would be fine. Everything. Beneath it, the day-to-day shadows raged past. Half-formulated thoughts loomed up out of dark nooks and crannies; she glimpsed barely recognizable phantoms of people, of children. If she stood as still as she was now, leaning against the sturdy trunk of the quince, she could briefly sense the threat that made her knees buckle.

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Anna Enquist studied piano at the academy of music in The Hague and psychology at Leiden University. She is the author of the novels The Masterpiece; The Secret, winner of the 1997 Dutch Book of the Year awarded by the public; The Ice Carriers; Counterpoint; Quartet; and the international bestseller The Homecoming, which received the Prix du Livre Corderie Royale-Hermione for its French translation. Anna is also the author of A Leap, a collection of dramatic monologues, as well as numerous poetry collections, including Soldiers’ Songs, for which she was awarded the C. Buddingh’ Prize; A New Goodbye; and Hunting Scenes, winner of the Lucy B. and C.W. van der Hoogt Prize.

Eileen Stevens earned her MA in linguistics with a specialization in translation from the University of Amsterdam. Her many Dutch-to-English translation credits include Connie Palmen’s Your Story, My Story; Karin Schacknat’s In and Out of Fashion; Vera Mertens’s The Concentration Camp; and Ineke van Doorn’s Singing from the Inside Out. She has also translated numerous essays on classical music and the arts. A New Jersey native, Eileen spent twenty-five years working as a professional violinist in a Dutch orchestra and has lived in Amsterdam since 1990.

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Category: On Writing