Book Review: The Fisherman

The Fisherman by John Langan

I wanted a book that scratched the same itch as T. Kingfisher’s horror, and this one did the trick. It’s very firmly ensconced in the real world, and yet the supernatural elements seemed plausible. One of the ways in which Langan brings the reader into the supernatural elements is through nested storytelling. The narrator tells a story of a guy he used to go fishing with, and they chat with the owner of a diner who tells them the story of something that happened near the creek they intend to go fishing at. So you’re already introduced to the elements of the story, but at a remove so you accept that it’s basically a big fish tale. When some of the elements reappear later, you already have a sense of what’s going on.

What makes this story work is how real the grief feels. Both the main character and his fishing buddy are dealing with crushing sorrow. It impacts their jobs, their health, their everything. So you can understand why they make the decisions they do. But also, the magic in this book is imbued with a sense of wrongness. Fantasy gives me a wistful longing to be a Deryini or a Grisha or a Waterbender or whatnot.. This one made me think “nope. Don’t go anywhere near that stuff.” It’s horror that doesn’t rely on senseless violence and gore to make its point. It’s horror that turns something beloved to the narrator–fishing and creeks–and turns it into a source of malevolence.

Is it a perfect story? No. I got very confused when he described the rope lines, and about how a creek is fed from an ocean rather than the other way around, and he got a little loosey-goosey with the narrator somehow knowing details he wasn’t present for, but it managed to tell a very well-crafted story in not that many pages and I’m glad I added it to my library.



View all my reviews