Review by Choice Review
This work of creative nonfiction, translated from the Swedish, is only partly about eels. Science journalist Svensson is clearly fascinated by these animals, but selective in what he chooses to write about. Grounded in Svensson's childhood experiences fishing for eels with his father, the narrative expands to cover the search for the origin of eels, who were once thought to spontaneously generate and who migrate as adults to spawn somewhere in the middle of the Sargasso Sea. Svensson traces the quest for knowledge about eels, from the ideas of Aristotle through Freud to Rachel Carson, and finally to tracking the journey of mature eels into the Sargasso Sea by Righton and his research team in 2016 (for confirmation, readers may consult https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/10/e1501694). Along the way Svensson digresses to reminisce about eel fisheries, ponder whether we can ever know the consciousness of other animals, reflect on the rise of the middle class in Sweden, and reveal some surprising facts he learned about his parents' ancestry. Svensson ends by paralleling his father's death from cancer with the eels' precipitate population decline and possible extinction. The book is not written for the naturalist interested in facts about eels, but nevertheless it offers an interesting wander through sometimes disparate information for a casual reader. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. General readers. --Jennifer A. Mather, University of Lethbridge
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Eels are weird, mysterious fish that defied human understanding for millennia. Eels seem to magically appear in previously dry ponds and streams when the rains come. How do they reproduce? No eels were found with reproductive organs until the mid-nineteenth century, and then only females were found. Young Sigmund Freud, at that point interested in natural science, spent a summer dissecting eels in a vain attempt to locate a male eel. These and other mysteries of the European (with some mention of American) eel are lovingly intertwined with the author's memories of his father and their many nights out fishing for eels from the grassy stream bank below their Swedish home. Blending a wonderfully evocative and succinct time line of scientific discoveries about eels with a memoir of his changing relationship with his father, Svensson has produced an extremely readable book on a fish that all have heard of but few (on our side of the pond) have actually seen. This hard-to- categorize book is a lovely, quiet read for fans of both natural history and memoirs.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Svensson, a Swedish journalist, melds the personal and scientific in this captivating look at the European eel. He describes the fish's intricate life cycle, as only recently uncovered by science: hatched as a tiny leaf-shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, they grow into a fragile, transparent "glass eel" and are carried across the Gulf Stream to Europe, where they grow "serpentine and muscular" in streams and rivers, before an unknown instinct triggers them to travel back across the Atlantic to the Sargasso, where they reproduce and die. The puzzles surrounding the species--Svensson observes that their reproduction process is still mysterious--have long fascinated students of zoology, from Aristotle to Freud; the latter was obsessed as a teenager with finding the male's sex organ, and failing to do so (Svensson speculates) may have led to him taking up psychoanalysis instead. Svensson alternates these scientific and historical passages with moving reminiscences of being taught to fish for eels by his father in a stream near their home, and with reflections on eels as a human food source and on current efforts to conserve them. Nature-loving readers will be enthralled by Svensson's fascinating zoological odyssey. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Eels have been mysterious creatures throughout time, provoking even the greatest minds. Aristotle was wrong about them and Sigmund Freud was baffled by them. Rachel Carson anthropomorphized them to make them more relatable to her readers. In this debut, Swedish journalist Svensson traces our understanding of eels, specifically the European eel. (The American and Japanese eel get few but valuable pages.) There is surprisingly little known about this fish; a 20-year study to pinpoint their origin was interrupted by World War I. Scientific discoveries are few and far between, but the well-paced writing here motivates readers to learn more about these secretive animals that are in danger of becoming extinct. While exploring this historical path, Svensson quietly weaves in his own experience with eels, focusing on his father and how we interpret our own histories as humans, collectively and individually. The work poses questions about philosophy, the metaphysical, and the spiritual, as well as scientific issues, in a way that will stir readers. VERDICT This beautifully crafted book challenges us not only to understand eels but our own selves. Highly recommended.--Elissa Cooper, Helen Plum Memorial Lib., Lombard, IL
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An account of the mysterious life of eels that also serves as a meditation on consciousness, faith, time, light and darkness, and life and death. In addition to an intriguing natural history, Swedish journalist Svensson includes a highly personal account of his relationship with his father. The author alternates eel-focused chapters with those about his father, a man obsessed with fishing for this elusive creature. "I can't recall us ever talking about anything other than eels and how to best catch them, down there by the stream," he writes. "I can't remember us speaking at all….Because we were in…a place whose nature was best enjoyed in silence." Throughout, Svensson, whose beat is not biology but art and culture, fills his account with people: Aristotle, who thought eels emerged live from mud, "like a slithering, enigmatic miracle"; Freud, who as a teenage biologist spent months in Trieste, Italy, peering through a microscope searching vainly for eel testes; Johannes Schmidt, who for two decades tracked thousands of eels, looking for their breeding grounds. After recounting the details of the eel life cycle, the author turns to the eel in literature--e.g., in the Bible, Rachel Carson's Under the Sea Wind, and Günter Grass' The Tin Drum--and history. He notes that the Puritans would likely not have survived without eels, and he explores Sweden's "eel coast" (what it once was and how it has changed), how eel fishing became embroiled in the Northern Irish conflict, and the importance of eel fishing to the Basque separatist movement. The apparent return to life of a dead eel leads Svensson to a consideration of faith and the inherent message of miracles. He warns that if we are to save this fascinating creature from extinction, we must continue to study it. His book is a highly readable place to begin learning. Unsentimental nature writing that sheds as much light on humans as on eels. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
