What makes a writer and an abstract painter to hunt for a Greenland shark? A creature which roamed the arctic ocean before the age of the dinosaurs and remains quite the mystery despite the fact that at some point it was hunted heavily. We may never learn that, but we'll still learn a lot from Morten Strøksnes' book about life north of the arctic circle. Most reviews painstakingly avoid comparison to the Old Man and the Sea as that would be an exaggeration, and yet ... this book comes pretty darn close.
Maybe it's the meandering story telling, maybe it's the associative jumps from one topic or aspect to another which follows the conversations of Aasjord and the author, but the book does have a distinct high-literature feel to it. Either way, it does spirit you away into the (surprisingly not so) frozen north where the jagged peaks reflect over the water and the fishermen have frost in their beard; into a world where two friends can sit in a leaky rubber boat and lament life itself while they fish for a predator that weighs a ton, lives for hundreds of years and existed for eons. And this, maybe this is what makes this book so exceptional. This conflict between the eons (i.e., how things used to be) and the modern day. Our generation may claim that we were born to this age, but humanity as a whole arrived to this point in time after a long journey and we who are alive today have a foot in both the past and the future. And what could be more jarringly 21st century than the paradox of nonchalantly throwing an emptied paint can filled with graks overboard while bemoaning the destruction of the planet? This book is about all of us.
"Sometimes, when we stand on shore during a powerful storm, it's like the sea wants to take us back."
Maybe it's the meandering story telling, maybe it's the associative jumps from one topic or aspect to another which follows the conversations of Aasjord and the author, but the book does have a distinct high-literature feel to it. Either way, it does spirit you away into the (surprisingly not so) frozen north where the jagged peaks reflect over the water and the fishermen have frost in their beard; into a world where two friends can sit in a leaky rubber boat and lament life itself while they fish for a predator that weighs a ton, lives for hundreds of years and existed for eons. And this, maybe this is what makes this book so exceptional. This conflict between the eons (i.e., how things used to be) and the modern day. Our generation may claim that we were born to this age, but humanity as a whole arrived to this point in time after a long journey and we who are alive today have a foot in both the past and the future. And what could be more jarringly 21st century than the paradox of nonchalantly throwing an emptied paint can filled with graks overboard while bemoaning the destruction of the planet? This book is about all of us.
"Sometimes, when we stand on shore during a powerful storm, it's like the sea wants to take us back."
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