Actually, Maxwell (former natural history columnist for Audubon) knows very well why she swallowed the fly—for the rapt feeling of connection with her homeplace, the outdoors, and her departed father—and she tells her tale with both levity and flair. Maxwell has always liked to fish but had preferred saltwater fishing, savoring the briny serenity of the ocean. Then she got caught up in the hyperkinetic world of fly-fishing, an ``Attention Deficit Syndrome . . . with hooks,'' the art of matching an invisible hatch with a fly tied to an invisible leader in pursuit of an invisible fish, a sport requiring ``raw skill, and instinct, balance, strength and concentration undilute.'' Her mentor and nemesis is Guido Reindhart Rahr III, whom she met on a fishing trip, a whim, to Outer Mongolia's Sharlon River, hard by the Siberian border. Back home, together they explore the Deschutes River, getting to know both the fish and the ``grand, green Pacific Northwest.'' Maxwell is a serious fly-fisherwoman—she wants to know how to make the throw, how to read the water—but her eye is forever roaming the scenery, to which she gives substance on the page: hawk-colored shoulders of basalt, ``the drizzled, chilled elegance that turns fishing water into champagne,'' the Pacific Northwest's malachite beauty. Her thoughts range about, taking in quantum electrodynamics, the reportedly diminishing sperm count of late-20th-century men, her father's face, which she sees in the sky—all of which provide a wild tangibility to her nature and the mysteries of fly-fishing. Equally entertaining is the parade of oddballs she meets, like Len, who'se only endearing qualities are dyslexia and a bad haircut. A nifty collection of fly-fishing vignettes, the happy result of ignoring ``the ghostly voices of fly fishermen past, begging me to take up stamp collecting.'' (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-57061-079-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Sasquatch
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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