The Fisherman

Note: I've now read The Fisherman five times, including two audio book listens. It's simply one of the best books I've ever read. I absolutely love it. My book club read it (they all loved it) and below is a mix of my original take on it, as well as a take on my book club's thoughts. Our book club read this book this summer. There were eight persons in attendance, ages 32 to 43, of varying backgrounds and lifestyles. We rate books on aspects such as quality, readability, likability, and overall book club cred (discussion, games, themes). This book rated our second highest scored read of all time. The book club absolutely loved this read… perhaps adored is a better word. There was just so much to discuss. The most common feedback was that this book is an absolute FEAST for the imagination. We were wild with it. The discussion was rapid, excited, and deep. We could have easily gone on for several more hours, but time ran short. What surprised everyone is that this genre (the horror/fantasy aspect) is not our usual taste (we love contemporary thrillers and literary pieces) but somehow it just worked for everyone, including the most select of us. We fell down the rabbit hole on this one, shooting literary references back and forth that we found within the pages. Folklore, mythology, religion, and of course the classics…. The list could go on and on. But it’s not a pretentious read. The story is very natural and smooth, with word play, wit, and references just beneath the surface. We loved pretty much all of the characters. I feel like I cannot do this book justice, but here are some of my personal thoughts down below. I always add book club triggers to these reviews. To avoid spoiler issues, it’s at the very bottom of this review. Please scroll down if you have concerns about this book in a discussion setting. Personal notes as a reader: Rarely do I become so obsessed with a book. I am in love with The Fisherman, and have been thinking about it near constantly. Looking at good and bad reviews, it seems like some negative reviews focus on the "story within a story" aspect of this novel. So it's no spoiler to share from the top that this book has two tales in it: the current day story of Abe and Dan, two widowers who find friendship and a mutual love of fishing together, as well as a complete backstory and history of both the region and The Fisherman. These two stories are about equal in length. If you go into this expecting this story to simply be Dan and Abe's story, you could be frustrated. I personally loved the "backstory" portion of this book and I almost wish the description of the novel was clearer in this aspect. I was also pleased that the story didn't go back and forth between times as these stories often do (The Winter People, The Chalk Man, Bring Me Back, etc.). It's a common enough trope to tell a story this way, but it was refreshing to try something new. It basically allows the backstory to roll out in one long narrative, completely enrapturing. I supposed the irony of the Fish Tale may have escaped some (or perhaps, they got the joke, but didn't find it funny) but the middle yarn wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining if it didn't channel the concept of a Fish Tale - perhaps one of the biggest you'll read. Although I adored this love letter to Melville (my heart be still) as an examination of the pasteboard mask (and indeed, I feel like Langen succeeded at punching through a wall between our void and the next) as well as the white whale and Leviathan, I was far more enraptured by the love letter to Lovecraft. I was obsessed with Lovecraft when I was younger, and this novel brought back so much joy and imagination to my adult heart. I haven't felt so carried away by fantasy since I was much younger, when this type of macabre seemed real, when magic seemed like a possibility. My cynical adult mind enjoys fantasy in novels with the Knowing that it's simply not real - like watching a horror movie but seeing the cowl edge in the mask, knowing it's only silicon and red paint. I love horror and fantasy, but I'm too skeptical at this point to be taken away. The Fisherman, in all its glory, was the first book I've read in years that I literally forgot my surroundings and was transported to a fantastical world where anything seemed possible. The child inside of my heart was terrified, excited, thrilled, sad, amazed.... and for that I gave this book the full amount of stars. I found myself quite literally in this magical place. Triggers: Please do not read if you do not want spoilers. The purpose of this review is, again, as a candidate for a book club setting. I used to get asked a lot about discussion “triggers” (concepts that could cause harm a person in discussion if not handled properly). This particular book has a single topic that comes to mind that could present a trigger issue. This book is about widowership. There are at least half a dozen different explorations of men being widowed. Not only the two main characters, but many of the side characters, including the villain and his sponsor. To be completely honest, and though there was at least more than one person there who could relate to this trigger, not a single person was affected in a negative way and, in fact, thought the exploration was beautiful and elegant. This is also not a huge spoiler as the concept is laid out right away, within the first few chapters. Otherwise, this book handles many of the common tropes in horror and fantasy... death, magic, religion, etc.

Minor Spoilers Ahead Cosmic Horror is hit or miss for me. I adore Lovecraft, but I acknowledge that much of his writing suffers from a generic narrator (Male academic) and a vagueness of description ("A creature too terrible to describe"), deficiencies (In my opinion) that are still being emulated today. Of course, Cosmic Horror can be great despite the narrator, and when used well the vagueness of description can be effective and unsettling. Too often, however, I find that a lot of the Cosmic Horror I read falls into these trappings. Not so with The Fisherman. The main character (Abe) is well fleshed-out and relatable. I appreciated the frankness and honesty of the character as he walks us through the difficult period following the death of his young wife very shortly after their marriage. He is very honest with the reader about how the death affected him and how he behaved in the throes of grief. Mr. Langan does a wonderful job of creating a character the reader cares about. However, Abe's story merely bookends the real meat of the book. Abe begins to bond with a coworker, a recent widower (although under very different circumstances) through fishing. One rainy day they are in a near-deserted diner on their way to a new fishing hole when the chef/ owner decides to let them in on the dark history of their destination, Dutchman's Creek. From this point, the bulk of the book is told by the the diner's proprietor. It's a story he heard from a minister who heard it from an elderly woman in a nursing home who lived part of it decades ago and was told the rest by her husband. The story was compelling and I certainly enjoyed it, but it was jarring to drop Abe so abruptly and just as jarring to pick him back up a few hundred pages later. Furthermore, although Abe makes mention that the new narrator had mentioned having literary aspirations at some point in his life, it is a little hard to believe that he is able to narrate a 200+ page 3rd and 4th hand story from memory and with the flow and literary flourishes he does (Although I seem to remember Abe alluding to the fact that he hadn't told them everything in the story, they had just somehow intuited it). Despite this clunky narrative, the story itself is rich and interesting. The tale follows a German immigrant family in the pre-WW1 years who move to a town in Upstate New York to assist in the building of a reservoir. Things are going well until a woman the whole town saw trampled to death shows up, broken and damp but "alive", in her home. From here we are given fascinating and deep backstory on the cosmic forces at play, each chapter adding to the foreboding of what awaits the town and possibly the world. One of my favorite aspects in Cosmic Horror is when the author alludes to the historical anecdotes, myths and origins behind the great horror at the center of the book, such as when Lovecraft talks about the Mad Arab or the ancient pagan tribes that worship his dark gods. Mr. Langan does not disappoint in this respect, and I enjoyed the mentions, brief as they were, of the Ottoman and biblical angles on the story. Furthermore, I greatly enjoyed the voyage taken by the German protagonist and a colleague to a bizarre and otherworldly city. As I've said before, I find many in this genre to be frustratingly vague, but this brief portion of the book was done brilliantly and the possibilities it suggested really helped add to the story. This was a great book and Mr. Langan is clearly a gifted author. If not for the clunky narration, I would give this book 5 stars. Mr. Langan doesn't spell everything out, but is never unnecessarily vague or glib as I've found many in the genre to be. I really enjoyed the ending as well. Perfectly chilling. On a more practical note, I was impressed by the physical book itself. The front and back cover art are beautiful. The paper is thick and the ink is striking. I never comment or even notice these things but this is one well made book.

Jesus Christ... this book! I never realised I was in love with it until I finished it and couldn't stop thinking about it, dreaming about it. So I read it again. It is dark and beautiful and horrific and wonderful. I think I know a book's good when I struggle to find words for it, and I really struggle for words when it comes to The Fisherman. It's one of my favourite books I've read in a while, it's one of my favourite Weird Fic books I've read in a while, and it was just a wonderful and capivating read. Okay, I'm gushing. This is a book which has a lot to say and a lot of moods. It's horror, and it's horrific. It's weird fiction, and it's very damn weird. It's Lovecraftian, and boy does it love Lovecraft. It's dark fantasy, and it really is dark and it really is fantastical. And there are veins of human stories and human compassion, veins of straight-foreward adventure and pure fantasy, historical elements and personal elements... it's a mish-mash river of things which flow through the reader in a torrent. I felt this was a story Langan had been ruminating on for a long time, and urgently wanted, or had, to tell. I liked but never loved Langan's short stories, they were interesting but never spoke to me, and I ordered this book on a whim after seeing good reviews. I didn't expect to like it. The amount of dark enjoyment and sheer joy got from this floored me. I think in his short stories, Langan tries to be too clever, too weird and too subversive, because if he can write like he wrote in this book, he can *write*. This book really dragged me into it's world, and I loved it. So, I've gushed - a few things I didn't like. Firstly - Well, I'd have liked to know more about Rainer. I love Rainer, I'm invested in Rainer, I want the continued occult adventures of Rainer. He put all the other characters in the shade, more or less. Secondly, I hate to sound like a prude, but I work in a school library, and when I was 90% through the book I was thinking 'This would be a fantastic introduction to Weird Lit for young adults/older teens. I'd like to put this on our shelves, I have so many ideas about an initiative to get kids reading horror/sci-fi/weird-lit' and then...bam...detailed sex scene. Maybe we can still put it on our shelves, but...hmm... don't get me wrong, I'm in no way anti-sex scenes, it's just that it changed the book from being the perfect intro to sinister and scary Weird Lit for teens and young adults to something that I'd feel cautious about recommending to younger folks. Not a true complaint, just that I wish I could recommend it to my young library patrons. Third, I desperately want more. I know this is best as a stand-alone book. But I want so much more. Total score: 5/5 stars, or maybe 4.99/5 stars. Stunningly wonderful, but with tiny little complaints that are mostly just my personal comments. A lot of fun, and a hell of ride for a cosmic horror book.

Wow! What a book. I did not expect this to be so full of dark fantasy when I picked it up: I honestly thought it was going to be about fishing. Scary fishing. But still: fishing. I loved the folklore-esque story lodged at the core of The Fisherman, which created a narrative structure reminiscent of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Fitting, perhaps, seeing as this is a tale about voyaging into the dark unknown — and what such a journey can do to us. Thematically, this novel is intriguing. Stylistically, the Fisherman’s structure and prose are eloquent, intelligent, and captivating. Like a river, this novel is, at times, fast-paced and action-packed; at others, it meanders into deeper, darker, and slower waters. I highly recommend if you’re a fan of weird fiction like Drew Magary’s The Hike, creeping slow-burn horrors like Alma Katzu’s The Hunger, and anything from the vault of Lovecraft’s eldritch creations. What a journey.

I love Langan's short stories. He's a rare voice in horror, emotionally intelligent and evocative. I picked this up thinking it would be a quiet little horror story about a couple of friends who go fishing. Boy, was I wrong. It's a huge, cosmic horror epic that sends you spiraling down wormholes across time and space. There are stories here that take place in the 1800s and early 20th century. And there is a dark glimpse into the underlying machinery of the universe. It's far more than one horror story - it's many. And all wrapped up in Langan's mesmerizing writing. A fabulous and immensely satisfying read.

"The Fisherman" handelt von zwei Männern, die ihre Familien verloren haben. Der Erzähler Abe, der seine Frau verloren hat und sein Freund Dan, der auch noch die Kinder in einem tragischen Unglück verloren hat. Es geht darum, wie sie Trost und Verbindung im Angeln finden und um die Berufung zum Angeln; wie Abe im Angeln eine Verbindung zu seiner toten Frau spürt. Und dann nimmt es eine unheimliche Wendung, als sie auf der Suche nach einem abgelegenen Angelplatz weit mehr finden, als sie sich jemals vorgestellt hätten, dass diese Welt bereithalten könnte. Dies ist die Rahmengeschichte. Eingebettet darin ist nochmal eine weitaus ältere Geschichte, die den beiden in einem Diner erzählt wird und einen sehr großen Platz in dem Buch einnimmt. Eine Mischung aus Lovecraft und Friedhof der Kuscheltiere, allerdings wird diese Beschreibung dem Buch nicht ganz gerecht. Langan hat zwar etwas lovecraftianisches geschaffen, sich aber nicht direkt an dessen Mythos angelehnt. Er erschafft einen eigenen Zugang zum kosmischen Grauen und das funktioniert sehr gut. Manch einem Leser mag das mit der eingebetteten Geschichte etwas formal erscheinen, ich fand diese Form sehr gut. In der Geschichte gibt es einiges an subtilem Horror und auch ein bisschen Body Horror. Das Buch ist sehr gut geschrieben, flüssig zu lesen, enthält perfekt integrierte surreale Visionen (die haben mir sehr sehr gut gefallen) und schafft ganz nebenbei eine wunderbar beklemmende Atmosphäre. Das Buch wurde als Meisterwerk gefeiert und das ganz zurecht, es war sehr schnell durchgelesen und wird wärmstens weiter empfohlen. Die Stimmung baut sich langsam auf, es wird aber nie langweilig. Etwas schade, dass ich das Buch nicht (als Ebook) auf Deutsch gefunden habe. Aber so war es günstiger und ich habe nebenbei noch etwas Englisch mit dem Kindle gelernt.

I don't get the high ratings. I couldn't connect with the characters and I'm finding it a boring book.