For Dombrowski, the “scarcely edible” bonefish, which he releases within seconds of catching them, are valuable simply...
A poet and Montana-based fly-fishing guide recounts his trip to the Bahamas, where he met an aging guide who taught him about fish and life.
In a lyrical if sometimes-overblown account, Dombrowski (Earth Again: Poems, 2013, etc.) loosely links reflections on his experiences catching and releasing bonefish, the history and geography of the Bahamas, the construction of fishing rods, stories he has told his children, and the difference between fishing or hunting for sport and for dinner. At the center of the book are David Pinder and his family. Pinder, retired—or forced out because cataracts restricted his sight—from the Deep Water Cay fishing lodge, where he worked for decades, still has an instinct for where fish are hiding, one he has passed down to some of his many children and grandchildren. Dombrowski regards Pinder, whose “life seems to verge on the rare heroic” and who has spent a lifetime “pursuing not only the seen but the unseen and intuited,” with reverence. He accords Pinder’s sayings—e.g., “you go looking for this, the ocean gives you that”—mythic significance. The author is fond of metaphors, some of which strain at their seams: a bonefish tail reminds him of “a loose-fitting bracelet affixed to the wrist of a beautiful woman seated at a bar,” and the sky at one point looks like “a ten-mile-wide Rothko, the canvas on loan from an archangel.” He heads each short chapter with an epigraph from the likes of Zen master Dogen and Christian mystic Meister Eckhart, which, depending on one’s point of view, either gives his angling adventures a philosophical slant or makes them sound pretentious.
For Dombrowski, the “scarcely edible” bonefish, which he releases within seconds of catching them, are valuable simply because they are so difficult to hunt down. Some may find his demanding prose equally rewarding, while others might prefer the textual equivalent of something closer to a catfish.Pub Date: Oct. 11, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-57131-352-2
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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