Our last discussion centered on the book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. As a whole the group felt it was a interesting read and that depiction of the lives and deaths of a sword boat crew had particular resonance for us since we live on an island and see our share of storms. The detailed description of drowning was particularly harrowing.
I felt the need to see an image of the boat and easily found this image on the Internet. This is the style of fishing boat I have seen throughout my life on the shore of New Jersey which lent the story even more poignancy for me. What was more unsettling was finding images of the lost crew. There are more images of life on the Andrea Gail at http://www.andreagailhistory.com/.
The group felt the story arc of the book sagged a bit in the middle after the Andrea Gail went down but that the pace picked up again with the description of the rescue of the crew of the Satori. The lengths that the National Guard and Coast Guard went to rescue the crew from the teeth of the storm were quite extraordinary. Andy insightfully pointed out that the structure of the book mirrors the structure of a storm with the building of tension, violent weather, calm at the eye and more violent weather and finally a survey of the damage done by the storm.
If you liked The Perfect Storm you might want to read The Hungry Ocean by Linda Greenlaw who was the captain of the Hannah Boden, the sister boat to the Andrea Gail. Her book describes life on a a sword fish boat. She is one of the few female boat captains in the sword fish fleet.
No comments:
Post a Comment