RaveThe Wall Street Journal...respect for the past—for the isolated fishing villages of northern Norway and for the hard lives of their people—runs like a powerful current through the book. In general the tone is cheerful, almost chatty, which makes the story all the more unsettling when the friends come close to falling out, the tensions between them heightened while stuck on shore waiting for the ever-unreliable outboard engine to be repaired. It roars back just in time, and they sally forth once more to find the shark. This rich and fascinating book, translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally, reaches its climax abruptly and surprisingly, and takes its leave rapidly. Morten Strøksnes’s clever trick is to remind us for one last time that the catching of the big fish is the least important part of the story.
