Linda's book The Hungry Ocean is a perfect title for book club discussions.

Discussion Questions for The Hungry Ocean:
  1. The epigraph is an excerpt from Shakespeare's sonnet 64. The full sonnet is:

    When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
    The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
    When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed,
    And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
    When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
    Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
    And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,
    Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
    When I have seen such interchange of state,
    Or state itself confounded to decay;
    Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate:
    That Time will come and take my love away.
    This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
    But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
    Why do you think Greenlaw took the title of her book from this sonnet?

  2. The author seems to have admired Bob Brown partially because his expectations of her matched her own demands on herself. How do you think others' assessments of our capabilities affect our own?

  3. Greenlaw downplays her gender, but also notes that her crew works hard because "no self-respecting fisherman will allow himself to be outworked by a woman." In what ways do you think that being a female may have actually helped her to become "one of the best sea captains, period, on the East Coast," as she was labeled by Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm?

  4. What is the most demanding job you've had? What was the most satisfying job you've had? Was it the same job?

  5. How do Linda Greenlaw's feelings about fishing compare to those of fictional characters in works such as Moby Dick or The Old Man and the Sea?

  6. The author traces her fascination with the fishing life to watching a lobster boat in an Isle au Haut cove when she was 12. Was there such a defining event in your life, which led you to your career?

  7. Being captain of a boat at sea for weeks at a time would test one's management skills. How would you assess Greenlaw's handling of the tension between Carl and Peter?

Copyright © 1999 by Linda Greenlaw. All Rights Reserved.