This is the 1980 Booker Prize winning novel by the eventual Nobel Prize laureate William Golding. Interestingly, he’s one of I think four laureates to win the prize, with the most recent winner Kazuo Ishiguro as well as Nadine Gordimer and VS Naipaul. He’s also known primarily for writing Lord of the Flies in the early 1950s, his first novel.
I ended up mostly liking this one. It’s about a ship voyage from England to Australia, called the Antipodes here, in the early 19th century, narrated by a young nobleman going to accept an appointment as a colonial official. The journal narrates the voyage including his conversations with the other passengers, discussions of word play and literature, and musings on being a landlocked soul on a long voyage (six months). It eventually settles on the debasement of a clergyman who faces a personal shame first by encroaching upon the captain’s personal space mistaking his role on land with a status at sea. The captain loudly and publicly humiliates the clergy, who goes into a kind of personal shame spiral eventually leading to his debauchment with liquor, becoming the victim of violence, and dying.
The novel then spends a good chunk giving a long journal/letter written bu the clergy that adds to the complexity of the situation.
There are two more novels in this series, and if I can find them, I will eventually read them. The structure and voice in the novel are quite interesting, and the plot is gripping and sad. The novel does a good job of creating this environment and taking to the brink of narrative credulity, without toppling over to the other side.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Rites-Passage-William-Golding-1999-10-01/dp/B01LP3XE6W/ref=sr_1_1?crid=236Q86CCC6WRI&keywords=rites+of+passage+william+golding&qid=1551649533&s=books&sprefix=rites+of+passage%2Cstripbooks%2C121&sr=1-1)