Ably captures the swagger, attitudes, and angling derring-do of a golden age of fishing history.
A fascinating look at the narrow but wild world of tarpon fishing.
Forbes and Garden & Gun contributing editor Burke indulges in his boundless enthusiasm for fishing, showing how storytelling is an important part of the fishing experience. “In angling, as in life,” writes the author, “it is the ones that get away that haunt our dreams, that push us over the brink into a lustful madness. And Homosassa [Florida] was the first place in these anglers’ lives where, hot damn, those dreams just might come true.” In Sowbelly (2005), Burke chronicled the search for a record largemouth bass. Here, he focuses on the less-known arena of tarpon fishing, discussing its most prominent practitioners as well as the extraordinary fish itself, a behemoth that can weigh more than 250 pounds and live to be 80. The book is also about a specific time and place—late-1970s to early-1980s Homosassa—and the colorful fishing culture that thrived within it. Burke brings readers to this infamous hot spot, where the biggest names in fly-fishing—including baseball star Ted Williams and a cadre of other tough characters—would converge to try and out-angle each other. But it wasn’t only about the purity of fishing. “The egos involved made the atmosphere electric,” writes the author. “The difficulty of the quest made it legitimate. And the drugs and the women that were swept in with the tide made it all veer out of control.” By the mid-1990s, the Homosassa tarpon craze began to peter out. Climate-unfriendly governance in Florida led to an ecological crisis that helped drive the tarpon from Florida’s coastal waters. Burke constructs the rise and fall of this unique fishing tale with impressive narrative control and an obvious reverence for its vivid characters.
Ably captures the swagger, attitudes, and angling derring-do of a golden age of fishing history.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64313-558-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Of great interest to Didion completists, though a minor entry in the body of her work.
The late novelist and journalist records her innermost, deeply personal struggles.
Didion died in 2021. Afterward, a file of private notes was discovered among her things, including notes addressed to her late husband, John Gregory Dunne, recounting sessions with the noted Freudian psychiatrist Roger MacKinnon, “a staunch defender of talk therapy.” Talk they do, with Didion serving up a battery of problems and MacKinnon offering wise if perhaps non-actionable responses to them, for instance, “Nothing about families turns out to be easy, does it.” It’s not easy, for sure, and Didion’s chief concern throughout is her daughter, Quintana Roo, who died after a long illness, the subject of Didion’s 2011 memoir Blue Nights. Indeed, so many of the conversations concern Quintana that Didion—by design, one supposes—skirts her own issues, although MacKinnon identifies some: “I did think you might have developed more self-awareness,” he says, referring to Didion’s habit of squirreling herself away whenever difficult subjects arose. Didion counters that she cherishes privacy, adding that she sometimes left her own parties to shelter in her office and admitting that her long habit of overwork was a means of emotional distancing. It’s not wholly that Didion lacks that self-awareness, but that the keenest insights about her come from others, as when she records, “I said a friend had once remarked that while most people she knew had very strong competent exteriors and were bowls of jelly inside, I was just the opposite.” That Didion was constantly anxious, sometimes to the point of needing medication, will come as no surprise to close readers of her work, but the depth of her anguish and guilt over her inability to save her daughter—she threw plenty of money at her, but little in the way of love—is both affecting and saddening.
Of great interest to Didion completists, though a minor entry in the body of her work.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780593803677
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
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