Abulu has a particularly dire prediction for Ikenna, the oldest of the boys: "[Y]ou will be bound like a bird on the day you shall die. ... [Y]ou shall die like a cock dies." Ikenna, he says, will lose his life at the hands of one of his siblings. There is very little light in The Fishermen; it's a relentlessly somber book that still manages to pull the reader in even as it gets more and more melancholy. The few scenes of carefree childhood joy are clouded by the prospect of what's to come, and Obioma is unsparing when it comes to writing about death, grief and the increasingly tragic destruction of an already beaten down family.
As dark as Obioma's prose is, though, it's also beautiful. His use of language is rich and hypnotic, and nearly every page is filled with an unexpected and perfectly rendered description. Abulu, for example, "subpoenaed tranquil spirits, fanned the violence of small flames, and rattled the lives of many," while the boys' mother "owned copies of our minds in the pockets of her own mind and so could easily sniff troubles early in their forming, the same way sailors discern the forming foetus of a coming storm."
Many parts of The Fishermen read like an incantation, albeit one that slowly turns into an elegy. It's hard to overlook the religious themes of the book — a priest tries to shoo the boys away from the river, but they pay him no heed. And when Ikenna initially invites his brothers to join him in his new hobby, he tells them, "Follow us, and we will make you fishermen!" It's almost certainly a reference to the book of Matthew, when Jesus tells Simon Peter and Andrew "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."
Things don't work out for Ikenna, of course, but they didn't work out for Jesus, either — at least in this world. The Fishermen might be bleak, but it's an excellent debut that does a very good job wrestling with some extremely difficult themes. Obioma writes with sophistication and inventiveness; he's obviously deeply in love with the English language, and it shows. This is a dark and beautiful book by a writer with seemingly endless promise.
Ikenna doesn't respond well. "[T]he prophecy, like an angered beast, had gone berserk and was destroying his mind with the ferocity of madness," Obioma writes, "pulling down paintings, breaking walls, emptying cupboards, turning tables until all that he knew, all that was him, all that had become him was left in disarray." Ikenna's madness, out of control, ends in bloodshed and despair.
Summers has grown as a writer since Some Girls Are, with more developed characters and more sophisticated emotions. Romy's chief tormenter, Tina, is still a cipher — Some Girls' one-dimensional villains drew a lot of complaints — and the ending again feels rushed and ambiguous, with a climax largely consisting of information about the fates of secondary characters. But this time, Summers addresses the adults in Romy's world, both the people who care about her and listen to her, and those who don't.
She also finds the book's heart in the tentative romance between Romy and her waiter co-worker Leon, who has a crush on her and no idea about her past. Her behavior toward him is erratic and volatile because her fear of physical contact is overwhelming, while part of her attraction is simply the relief of being around someone who doesn't see her as a victim or a liar. This isn't a Nicholas Sparks romance, where a great love affair heals a wounded heart; it's something uglier, rawer and more realistic, with Romy taking advantage of Leon to bury her feelings, or in her better moments, to edge toward examining them.
As a look at rape culture, All The Rage is straightforward and un-nuanced; Romy's peers selfishly trying to diminish her to reduce their own possible guilt, while the authorities shut out a situation they don't want to face. But as a look at the trauma after an assault, it has a queasy power and some bold insight.
Toward the end of the book, Romy climbs into a scalding hot bath, willing her body to understand the difference between the present pain she's causing it and the past pain she wants to shut out and forget. Her body refuses to get that message. While she looks for ways to comprehend and express her rage, turning it inward doesn't bring any relief.
The essential narrative here, the twisty tale of a kidnapping that incredibly goes right, is exciting. It is balanced out with the journalistic account of McDougall's entry into the world of the hero. His personal quest to "rewild the psyche" might seem an awkward fit with war storytelling. But under McDougall's sure hand the combination improbably works. Some background is necessary here. In Percy's world, pretty much everyone died, either from the pandemic flu or the nuclear bombs mentioned above. But the brave and resourceful people of St. Louis had a plan. They erected massive walls, killed anything that came close, declared themselves the guardians of the American Way, and essentially shut themselves off from the world in hopes of weathering the catastrophe. Which they did — right up until the start of the book, when we meet the citizens of Sanctuary (a.k.a. Old St. Louis) being abused by a tyrannical mayor, terrorized by crooked police, baked by an unforgiving sun and running quickly out of water.
To Percy's credit, Sanctuary is no insta-dystopia. He goes to great and detailed lengths to describe the rise and fall of the place — the terror in which it was conceived, the expediency with which it was built, the ruthlessness with which it was maintained, and the eventual (arguably inescapable) corruption of the 1% which is in the process of bringing it down. There's dissent brewing among Sanctuary's 99%. A feeling that their foothold on civilization is becoming untenable. And when a rider suddenly appears outside the walls, bringing news of rain, food and salvation waiting in the Pacific Northwest, obviously someone is going to grab a map and go looking.
This core incident gets a thorough airing out in Christopher McDougall's Natural Born Heroes: How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance. As stirring as the kidnapping is, it forms only the nucleus of the narrative — the grain of sand, as it were, that serves to form the pearl. McDougall enlarges his tale exponentially by immersing himself in what he calls "hero school." The kidnappers, as it turns out, were a daring band of British commandos and Greek resisters; taking them as his model, McDougall composes a mash note to physical endurance. He out-irons ironman training.
This is as it should be. McDougall has written for Men's Health and Outside. His fans aren't armchair enthusiasts. They like to get out there and do. Natural Born Heroes shows them how and why: Molding himself on the lines of the Greek rebels and British commandos who pushed the limits of the human body in order to perform feats of incredible valor, McDougall schools the reader in the art of the champion.