Rating 4 ⭐s
You can buy Silent Riders Of The Sea...here You can visit John Gerard Fagan's website...here In 1930, Jack the miner is grieving the loss of his young son.
In a desperate attempt to escape his misery, he makes the choice to leave.
With a motley crew of Scots, he embarks on Arctic fishing with the promise of a better life.
John Gerard Fagan, the author of the memoir Fish Town, takes us on a ride to the Arctic Sea through Jack's battle for survival on a crammed and gruesome ship and inescapable submission to the cruelty of nature and humankind alike.
In the background, memories of his life as a miner, while a permanent excruciating pain from mourning his own child lingers.
Be ready for a tale of human suffering, violence, and sadness with this story of the hard side of human life.
Now then where to start with this very unusual item. I began reading this expecting a novel, you know the usual set format. Protagonist, antagonist., plot, character arc, redemption etc, etc. However it becomes clear from very early on this is not your bog standard novel.
For a start the chapters are numerous and very short and I mean very short. There are no capital letters or full stops.. How do you know when a new sentence ends and a new one begins.? Well the author just starts a new line. In addition the author leaves out a lot of minor words that help the narrative flow such as conjunctions. The result is prose that is as close to poetry, without actually being poetry that I have ever read. At one point I found myself counting syllables convinced that he was, in part at least, writing in iambic pentameter. All very odd and it succeeds it making you feel a little off kilter as if your horizon of normality has tilted a little. Dare I say it makes you feel little sea sick which all adds to the immersive experience. This literary sleight of hand is similar to "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy where there are no chapters at all, just an endless trail with no respite which foreshadows the narrative.
So if it doesn't feel like a novel what does it feel like. Well the author has such a gift for creating a living, breathing, visceral world that if feels like an insertion into an actual life. Like the old TV show Quantum Leap but not in a cute, feel good, solve the mystery, all's right with the world sort of way. The author's world is horrifyingly brutal and unforgiving. Its probably the most bleak thing that I have ever read. Bleak because its probably the most like real life that I ever read. It's like a cross between The Road by Coramc McCarthy and the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by S.T. Coleridge all mixed together and then given a seasoning of grim, dour, hard edged Scottishness.
The reader really feels as if he really has lived Jack's life. It is very real. The trouble is Jack's life is horrific at the start and goes downhill from there.. Death, at times, seems a much better option.
I feel that this will be a marmite book. Some will love it, some will find it too grim..
I enjoyed the experience, I thought the writing was captivating and stimulating. Something very different from the norm. Going on the doomed voyage with Jack was unforgettable. Hence the four stars.
The author is very good at what he does. Just don't expect happiness anywhere or anytime.
"as soon as they were away from the shore cabins damp n diseased from the lack of sunlight human faeces mixed with blood n vomit from the last voyage left to harden in corners dirt n mould blooming like weeds in summer splintered wood soft to the touch and crumbled in your fingers those were the highlights of that ship"
"breath smoking through the cold the nets were cast once more water swept back to the deep fish were slaughtered gutted canned floating on swollen waters and all on board acted like they were not inches from death."
"the local rich working the local poor to death to feed the foreign poor n line the pockets of the foreign rich there was the only meaning he found."
"night sandpapered the remains of the day away and left the sky blood red"
- If You Liked This Then You May Like...
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. (review ...here)Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter.
John Gerard Fagan is a Scottish writer from Muirhead in the outskirts of Glasgow, who currently lives in Dunbar..He has published over a hundred short stories, essays, and poems in Scots, Scottish Gaelic, and English. Fish Town is his first book, about leaving everything behind to move to a Japanese fishing village for seven years. Silent Riders of the Sea, a Scottish verse novel of struggle set in 1930, is his second.
