Customer Reviews

Trawler: A Journey Through the North Atlantic

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

So you've noticed. Some reviewers give enthusiastic accolades, while others seem to denounce it. But why such polarized views?

This is where the "expectation" can ruin your appetite. It is probably safe to say that Trawler by Redmond O'Hanlon is a unique and unusual read for everyone. The book could have discussed a plethora of political, economical and ecological issues surrounding Scottish fishing industry. Or could the scholastic O'Hanlon have delved into the biology of deep sea fauna. Each of such approaches would have led to a great story, but as it is, Trawler is about something else.

O'Hanlon chose to limit himself to what had actually happened aboard a commercial trawler out in the frigid North Atlantic. He decided to focus on a handful of unfamiliar experiences that made his trip very special; the relentless weather and the incessant physical labors, the severe sleep deprivation, the encyclopedic knowledge displayed by a young biology student on the ship and the curious comradeship (or shall we say, the shipmateship) among the rough, hard-talking crews.

The horrific weather is evident throughout the book; the simplest move is with utmost difficulty. And the first casualty is, of course, the author's GI tract. There is very little sense of time passing, which testifies to the hectic but monotonous nature of the trade. But most importantly, it is the sense of sleep deprivation (miserable brain malfunction) that O'Hanlon succeeds most in conveying; the bombardment of non-stop, uncontrollable, loosely structured sentences. A big chaos. A real stream-of-consciousness. But he manages to stop short of becoming gibberish. Yes, there are numerous chaotic passages, but they are there to help the (mock) experience of the reader. With all these, Trawler still manages to be informative; Greenland halibut and Orange roughy (critically overfished in the North Atlantic; try to avoid them at grocery store), a fear of becoming uxorious (being overly fond of one's wife) and the concept of sexual selection and alpha mates (O'Hanlon seems to be obsessed with this).

O'Hanlon has an aloof sense of humor but is also poignant at a few key moments. Overall, it is an entertaining read. About two-thirds into the book, at the height of this all-neurons-gone-haywire, O'Hanlon's conversation with one of the most rugged shipmates of all, Robbie, reaches a revelation; the reason why he approached this book in the way he did. A good effort.

I usually like O'Hanlon's books...I usually can't put them down. But this one...well, I'm just not sure I like it at all. Written in what O'Hanlon, I'm sure, thinks is a style akin to the sleep-deprived ramblings he must have encountered on the trawler, the book instead veers into incoherence and becomes only annoying. Revelations only work if you feel some sympathy and identification with the speaker and I found the speakers, with one exception, highly uninteresting and unsympathetic. Only big Bryan held my interest and I wanted to hear more from him.
I found myself heartily sick of Luke, the walk-on-water marine biologist...he was like an orchestra work comprised of one note, played over and over and over. Jason the skipper...same thing. O'Hanlon invests them with a false nobility that just grates on the nerves after awhile.
I can't recommend this book, but I heartily recommend O'Hanlon's other works.

After reading "In Trouble Again" and "Into the Heart of Borneo" I had pegged O'Hallahan as a prime example of the British "Fish out of water, funny things happen" school of travel writing. Sort of Bill Bryson in really exotic places. And I really liked these books.
"Trawler" is something else, though. The setting this time is not some tropical jungle, but a fishing vessel in the middle of a winter storm in the Northern Atlantic. Nature becomes a terrorizing presence that robs the people on the boat of peace of mind and sleep, and leads to frenzied, almost delusional conversations about everything from life on small islands to marine biology. The pace is close to Hunter Thompson's drug-addled ramblings, but here it is driven by the need to make sense of at least something in the face of the on-slaught of the elements.
The ideas expressed in the book would be interesting even if expressed in a more conventional setting, but the rythm that is pushed onto the people on the boat by the storm makes it irresitable. As much as I liked "The Lobster Chronicles", I don't think it holds a candle to this book.

Since reading the stories of the U-Boats and convoys in the North Atlantic in the middle of winter I've always wanted to see what it was like.

This book cured me of any possible thoughts I might have had about actually doing something about it.

Apparently the author had some of the same ideas. Unlike me he actually did something about it. I'm glad he did, now I don't have to. I learned from him that I especially do not want to go see the North Atlantic on a fishing trawler.

The book is kind of strange in its way of writing. But I think he was trying to capture the actual nature of the conversations being conducted by sleep deprived men. He couldn't write this way, he couldn't think this way normally and be the successful author he is. I think that writing like this shows a lot more talent than the normal travelogue.

This is a book that will make you think strange thoughts as you look at a piece of fish on your plate. If you want a book on going strange places, this is clearly the one.

O'Hanlon has done as good a job as any with the given material. The book premise - go out fishin' on a trawler for a few weeks in the North Atlantic in the middle of winter. By the end of the book you certainly have a sense of it - arduous, stinking, sleep deprived, and relentless. He tries to portray his shipmates, mostly louts, as interesing and half succeeds. He attempts to make the specifics of trawling interesting but how could you? The book sinks under O'Hanlons rambling conversations with his mentor Luke most of which are not even vaguely interesting. O'Hanlon himself becomes an embarrassing burden to the crew as they grind toward their quota. It is in this burden that the theme solidifies - 'trawler life sucks'.

REDMOND O'HANLON'S latest book, Trawler, reads just like the behemoth fishing vessel upon which it purports to report. It's a lumbering, slow-moving tome that searches relentlessly for a nourishing tidbit to dredge-up from some murky depth..
O'Hanlon's heavy work might have been an insightful article had it been restricted to 2000 words and published in an industry rag such as TRAWLER TIMES, but at 339 pages it quickly becomes bogged in the doldrums.
There are a few choice passages to be sure, but mostly it reads like a journal kept by a precocious and often sulky 14-year-old sea scout. And being English, O'Hanlon is given to whimsical asides the likes of which often give the impression that this scout was more than a bit petulant.
Long passages of this book seem like wordy conversations simply transcribed, without edit, from some hidden recording device. There literally appears page after page of stream of consciousness-like observations, served up without paragraph breaks or meaningful insights.
The overwhelming detail borders on the redundant, the character sketches seem incomplete, and the author's dense commentary so buried amongst the many pages that at times one would like to just tie a rope to this book and use it as an anchor.

By the end of the volume, I felt as though it were I who had stood days on end in the fish cleaning room, repeatedly performing the same mindless task, but rather than gutting haddock, in this instance, it was the bloody drudgery of page turning.

My admiration for O'Hanlon's previous work lead me to this latest,somewhat muddled, endeavor.Somewhere in "Trawlers" 330 plus pages is a decent 300 page book.there is much to like here; vivid descriptions of life on a commercial fishing boat and the men who risk their lives in this most dangerous of vocations,some fascinating(sleep deprivation induced) steam of conscious ruminations, and some real human drama.But there are also enough pointless interjections and banal parenthetical asides to sink a trawler.Och, Redmond! (Old Worzel), where's your editor?

O'Hanlon's story of his decsion to go to sea at the age of 51
under the worst conditions imaginable is both hilarious and
and educational. Working with a crew who are 20 years his junior,
he faces long periods of sleep deprivation, incredible cold
and dangerous working conditions that the crew just take for
granted.The crew are a likable bunch and the conversations they have after hours of hard work and no sleep are surrealistic and very funny. Marine biologist Luke's knowledge of the strange creatures that come up in the nets is mind-boggleing. A good sea story that gives credit due to people who work in one of the
world's most dangerous professions.

...than any other fishing story I have ever read, including the one about that big white whale. Full of fascinating "natural history," full of the SMELLS and the BRUISES of deep-sea commercial fishing, full of the distractions necessary aboard, great long rambles that are just wonderful. It's an improbable book,completely fascinating. Read it!

This book was an extreme disappointment. It is a series of manic run-on sentences that are extremely distracting and hard to follow. It does depict some of the danger and difficulty inherent in fishing the North Atlantic in winter but deviates so often from the original topic that it is a waste of time. The author spends too much time trying to be eloquent and witty that one loses track of what he is trying to communicate.