The Narwhal Horn

The Narwhal Horn is Robert’s first novel, and its importance in the story lies less in any account of its contents than in the life its success helped set in motion. Its publication coincided with professional recognition and a changing balance between Robert and Victoria West; years later, Robert invokes that earlier success as the measure of what another book might mean for his new family. Through Auden’s recollections and a conversation with her father, the novel becomes both a marker of past achievement and a source of hope—and pressure—in the present.

Identity and Publication

The Narwhal Horn was Robert’s first novel. After he and Victoria West came to the U straight out of graduate school, Robert found a publisher for it while Victoria was pregnant with their son, Hollis, and working to finish her dissertation. The book therefore belongs to the beginning of their shared academic and family life: Robert was establishing himself as a writer while Victoria was temporarily occupied with pregnancy, childcare, and uncertainty about her scholarly future.

The novel achieved both critical and commercial recognition. By the time Auden was born, Robert had risen on the strength of its success: The Narwhal Horn had appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and he had been nominated for a National Book Award. He was also heading the creative writing program. The evidence gives no account of the novel’s plot or style; its significance is conveyed through the professional distinction and family change associated with its reception.

A Book in the Family’s Career History

The novel’s success forms one half of a long shift in the parents’ professional fortunes. When Hollis and then Auden were young, Victoria returned to academic work with renewed force. She obtained a visiting lectureship and a publisher for her dissertation, became a popular professor, secured a full-time position, and published a second and then a third book. Robert watched as Victoria’s career advanced. He joked that she was the family’s breadwinner and his meal ticket, presenting himself as proud of her success even as their relative positions changed.

The later contrast sharpened when Victoria received a prestigious endowed chair and Robert was dropped by his publisher. The book that had first established him as a successful novelist thus stands at the start of a trajectory that did not continue uninterrupted. By the time Auden describes her father’s circumstances, he is known not only for the earlier novel but also for a long-delayed follow-up and disputes within his department. The first book remains a point of achievement, but it cannot shield him from later professional disappointment or the conflict that grows between the spouses.

This sequence gives The Narwhal Horn a particular place in the family story: it is tied to Robert’s early recognition, while Victoria’s subsequent accomplishments alter the household’s professional balance. The novel does not itself explain the parents’ eventual separation. Rather, the remembered difference between Robert’s earlier success and his later difficulty provides context for the career tensions surrounding their marriage.

The Novel as a Measure of Hope

Years later, Auden and Robert talk over dinner at a place on the pier. Their conversation begins stiffly, but turns toward his work. Robert describes his new book as an intricate study of a man trying to escape his family’s past. He has torn out the middle because it was not working, though he believes the replacement material is much better. As he explains the character’s inner conflict, Auden is reminded of what she loves about him: his passion for his work and the concentration with which he speaks about it.

Auden tells him she is eager to read the manuscript. In response, Robert links the book directly to The Narwhal Horn: Auden was present when the first novel came out and saw how its success changed their lives. He hopes the new book might do something comparable for him, Heidi, and their baby. The earlier novel is therefore not simply a recollection of past acclaim. It supplies Robert with a precedent for imagining that another literary success could reshape his current circumstances and help secure a future for his new family.

That hope also reveals a difference between Robert and Heidi. He wishes she could see the importance of the book as he does, and describes her strengths as practical and business-minded, in contrast to the way he believes academics and writers think. Auden suggests that Heidi may be emotional because of sleep deprivation. The conversation does not resolve their disagreement, but it shows how Robert’s understanding of the new manuscript is bound up with his memory of the first novel and with his wish for Heidi to recognize its stakes.

Narrative Significance

The Narwhal Horn reaches the reader through retrospective family history and a later conversation, not through an excerpt from the novel itself. Its meaning accumulates across those two moments: first as the work that launched Robert into public success, then as the example he uses when trying to explain why his current manuscript matters. This framing makes the title a recurring reference point in Auden’s understanding of her father’s work and of the changes within her family.

The contrast between the two books is telling without making their outcomes identical. The first has a known publication and a documented record of recognition; the follow-up remains in progress, with its middle removed and rewritten. Robert’s belief that the new work could have a comparable effect is a hope, not an established result. The distance between his remembered achievement and his uncertain present lends the earlier novel both emotional weight and a measure of irony: it offers proof that his work once changed his life, but no guarantee that it can do so again.