Acclaimed novelist Nova (The Universal Donor, 1997, etc.) turns his writerly eye to his other great passion, fly-fishing. One of Nova’s great strengths as a novelist is his unerring eye for natural detail. In this slender volume, one senses that his experience as a trout fisherman has helped to strengthen that eye. For much of its length, this little book is predicated on the tension between that which is seen above the water’s surface and that which takes place out of sight, and the ways in which life beyond the trout stream falls into a series of similar dichotomies. “The events of life and brook trout often meet at the line of demarcation between the world of the fish and the world of the fisherman, between the seen and the unseen,” Nova writes at the book’s outset. The theme resonates quietly but insistently elsewhere in the book, with a passing reference to New York City’s Minetta Lane, under which still runs a now invisible brook, and the artists’ lofts of SoHo in the 1960s, when people lived sub rosa in old industrial spaces. For Nova, that tension clearly resonates powerfully in his writing life—in the unseen struggles of the writer seeking a voice, as distinct from the seemingly untroubled surface of the books he produces—and his personal life as well. The book is unflinchingly candid about both the writing process and the hard work of marriage, each of which is seen intertwined with his fishing and his love of nature. For the first two-thirds of the book, Nova delineates both the hidden dangers and multiple rewards of fishing, family, and writing. Regrettably, in its final movement, the book comes a bit unglued, with a couple of anecdotal passages that seem to have been included to flesh out what would have otherwise been a long magazine article. For the most part, an engagingly honest and keenly observed essay, flawed by its dribbling-away ending.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-55821-974-9
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.
A disjointed debut memoir about how competitive swimming shaped the personal and artistic sensibilities of a respected illustrator.
Through a series of vignettes, paintings and photographs that often have no sequential relationship to each other, Shapton (The Native Trees of Canada, 2010, etc.) depicts her intense relationship to all aspects of swimming: pools, water, races and even bathing suits. The author trained competitively throughout her adolescence, yet however much she loved racing, “the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn’t motivate me.” In 1988 and again in 1992, she qualified for the Olympic trials but never went further. Soon afterward, Shapton gave up competition, but she never quite ended her relationship to swimming. Almost 20 years later, she writes, “I dream about swimming at least three nights a week.” Her recollections are equally saturated with stories that somehow involve the act of swimming. When she speaks of her family, it is less in terms of who they are as individuals and more in context of how they were involved in her life as a competitive swimmer. When she describes her adult life—which she often reveals in disconnected fragments—it is in ways that sometimes seem totally random. If she remembers the day before her wedding, for example, it is because she couldn't find a bathing suit to wear in her hotel pool. Her watery obsession also defines her view of her chosen profession, art. At one point, Shapton recalls a documentary about Olympian Michael Phelps and draws the parallel that art, like great athleticism, is as “serene in aspect” as it is “incomprehensible.”
While the author may attempt to mirror this ideal, the result is less than satisfying and more than a little irritating.Pub Date: July 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-15817-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
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