The North Water, by Ian McGuire - book review: A tale of whaling that would make your mother blush

If Nobel Prizes were given out for swearing, then Ian McGuire's second novel would win by a mile. In his hand, expletives are not just big and clever, but almost lyrical: “A man can't be much deeper than fucking dead,” says a character called McKendrick, who will be accused of the story's central outrage.

One effect is a cussed world almost devoid of compassion or social niceties. The North Water is a conspiracy thriller stuffed into the skin of a blood-and-guts whaling yarn. In 1859, a group of unsentimental men converge on a ship called the Volunteer. A violent, cold-blooded harpoonist called Henry Drax. Cavendish, a conniving schemer. Captain Brownlee, with a track record for wrecking ships. Finally, an Irish laudanum addict called Sumner, wounded in the siege of Delhi and the Volunteer's surgeon. What could possibly go wrong?

These merry men think they are off to slaughter whales for oil and blubber, and there are memorable scenes of cetacean carnage. But deeper purposes, designed by the cool businessman Baxter, are at play: the set-up is like The Usual Suspects shaken up by Moby Dick and Deadwood.

McGuire's genius for verbal obscenity has deeper purposes. The North Water partakes of mid 19th-century frictions between body and spirit, the material and the visionary. Representing the latter is Otto, an adherent of Swedenborg who sees future calamity in dreams, and maintains that “The world we see with our eyes is not the whole truth... What we can imagine or think exists as truly as anything we can touch or smell.” Advocating for the hardline materialists is Drax. “A bear is a bear,” he philosophises. Drax's essential existentialism can be boiled down to: “One thing happens, then another comes after it.” This enables him to rape, murder and steal without remorse, a sociopathic outlook so revolutionary in even this pitiless context that it beggars both belief and language itself. “If there's a word been coined for a man like him, I don't believe I've learned it,” says his nemesis Sumner, before exiting in pursuit of a bear across the Arctic wastes. A final confrontation with Drax is eventually all that remains.

The novel is a stunning achievement, by turns great fun and shocking, thrilling and provocative. Grand themes like class, God, business, politics and justice are propelled along by bad men doing unspeakable things with drugs, harpoons and (in one memorable clash) a sextant. While the mood is generally gloomy, the flashes of tenderness and decency shine all the brighter. Behold: one of the finest books of the year.

Scribner £14.99. Order for £12.99 (free p&p) from the Independent Bookshop: 08430 600 030