Amazon.com Review
Bill Barich casts such deft prose that the thinness of
Crazy for Rivers might feel like a disappointment to some readers; at 80 pages in length, you wish there were simply more of it. Barich's skill flows from the way he can layer a book, pulling in disparate venues--as he did so masterfully in
Laughing in the Hills with death, mourning, horseracing, and the Renaissance--to form a three-dimensional whole; when he limits himself to a narrower scope, his pool seems achingly fished out.
Still, what there is here is choice, elegant, and even stark. When Barich writes about fly-fishing and the pursuit of trout--"That autumn," he begins, "I went a little crazy for rivers"--he's, of course, writing about more, much more: family, friendship, loyalty, identity, obsession, even midlife crisis. For all the good fishing and fish stories he offers, it is ultimately the reeling in of the spirit that becomes his best catch: "I thought about the friends, lovers, and family I had fished with," he writes in his notebook on his last night out: "where they were now and what they might be doing....It must all be catch-and-release in the end, I thought, all part of a flow whose essence we can never truly grasp." Perhaps we can't. But at least Barich provides an angle on it. --Jeff Silverman
This superb collection of essays will make readers crazy not only for rivers but also for trout and Barich's vivid prose. Part autobiography, part angling how-to, and part celebration of friendship and its surprises, the volume describes how Barich became a trout fisherman and writer after moving to California. As the title suggests, the author offers delightful river vignettes, mostly set in California and Montana, but his book's audience will hardly be limited by geography. Barich's anecdotes, especially a description of a big brown trout he caught in the Bear River, deftly blend the beauty of rivers and the appeal of fishing, and his easy-to-follow advice gives readers the hope that they, too, can catch similarly big fish. Barich is an excellent stylist no matter his subject. His description of some particularly succulent tomatoes is as evocative and poetic as anything he says about trout. Suggest this outstanding collection to fans of Norman Maclean and Thomas McGuane. Their only disappointment will be the book's length; it's as brief as the flash of a trout breaking off the line.
John Rowen
