An uneven but rich novel of a fisherman’s career.
A California fisherman evolves with the times in Koepf’s debut coming-of-age novel.
Alex Skarsen comes from a family of commercial fishermen in Half Moon Bay, California. His rite of passage comes in 1961, when the 11-year-old boy is allowed to skip school, put on his boots, and join his father and uncle for the opening day of crab season aboard their family boat, the Valkyrie.He’s not only initiated into the hard work of crab fishing but the business side, as well, in which union politics and crew rivalries can make for conflicts: “It’s a God danged free for all, is what it is,” complains Alex’s mother. “The whole season comes down to the first week and God forbid a breakdown. You work on the gear for a month, go fishin’ for cheap and hate your friends.” However, when a man on a rival boat falls overboard, Alex learns just what sort of stand-up guys his father and uncle are. As Alex matures into the fishing lifestyle, times get increasingly hard: The fishing industry is changing, the pickings are thinner, and crews must take increasing risks to make their pay. Along with his family’s crabbing work, Alex finds gigs diving for abalone, salvaging scrap, and fishing for salmon in the wild waters of Alaska. He encounters a wide range of characters who make their living on or near the sea, each with his or her own story—and not all stories are to be trusted.
The novel covers Alex’s three-decade career on the water and ends with some of his closest scrapes during his stretch in Harbor Patrol. Wherever he finds himself, though, the fish are never far from his mind; as he tells an old friend late in the novel, “Every time I dream, it’s a fishing dream.” Overall, Koepf’s prose reveals an eye for sharp detail, honed over his own decades on the waves: “The sky and clouds were displayed on the watery surface as blue and gray marbled mirror images. There was not a breath of wind all day, nor had there been for the two previous days.” The novel has a choppy, episodic structure for the most part, particularly in the second half, in which the coming-of-age story that revolves around Alex and his family’s boat is supplanted by odd jobs and solo adventures. Like a boat on the sea, though, Koepf doesn’t always have the wind at his back; some segments of the novel drift with little momentum, while others move along briskly and with purpose. Even so, the book is never tedious, due to its finely drawn characters, and readers will have the sense that they’re looking in on a way of life that’s mostly vanished over the last half century. In the tradition of exaggerated fishing stories, there are a few elements that strain believability to amp up the drama or humor. For the most part, though, the author provides a stirring, melancholic, and naturalistic portrait of a life on boats.
An uneven but rich novel of a fisherman’s career.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 369
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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