Reeling In Russia: An American Angler In Russia (Hardcover)

by Fen Montaigne (Author) "A name can exert a strange pull..." (more)
Key Phrases: Prince Kurakin, Soviet Union, Kola Peninsula (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"To some foreigners," writes American journalist Fen Montaigne, "Russia was anathema, a place grim beyond description. But to others, such as myself, Russia was an affliction, an incurable habit. From the very beginning, I was drawn to her dilapidated landscape, inhabited by people who knew hardship as intimately as we might a member of the family." After completing a stint as Moscow bureau chief for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1996, Montaigne resolves to feed his habit in a somewhat unorthodox manner: a three-month fly-fishing expedition that will cross 10 time zones from west to east and cover 7,000 miles.

Traveling with a duffel bag bulging with state-of-the-art fishing gear is probably not the best way to journey through a largely impoverished land without arousing suspicion, but the neophyte fly-fisher is romanced by the vastness and anonymity of the place and simply cannot resist. Unknown rivers and lakes, after all, are the stuff of anglers' dreams, and so Montaigne blithely sets out with dancing trout and salmon in his head. All too soon, however, he is disabused of such gumdrop notions. Environmental degradation, bureaucratic hoops, unscrupulous "entrepreneurs," and a parade of vodka parties greet him at nearly every stop.

Montaigne's initial quest is swiftly superseded by a series of picaresque misadventures--some comic, others frightening--that serve to educate the innocent abroad as well as the reader. He tours centuries-old monasteries on the Solovetski archipelago that Stalin once turned into gulags, stumbles across a shallow grave near the Kolyma slave mines, narrowly escapes a pair of buxom highway robbers on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and breaks bread with fish-poaching apparatchiks on the Detrin River. Revealed along the way is a country in utter turmoil, trying to escape from its past without a destination in mind, almost childlike in its simplicity. Some of these East-meets-West scenes are strangely poignant in their squalor. At one vodka-soaked stop, the author obligingly gets drunk with the locals and caps the night by driving a brakeless Ural truck through town, much to the hoots and delight of his hosts: "'Second! Second!' the boys hollered as the engine whined, and I jammed the heavy stick into second gear. We hit a straightaway. I shifted into third and cranked the Ural up to about 25 miles an hour. Ashes from their cigarettes flitted about the cabin. I glanced over at the boys and saw that great, demented smiles had spread on their faces."

Eventually Montaigne overcomes his ineptitude with a flyrod and manages to hook into some nice fish, but his triumph hardly matters; the real catch of the day is the distillation of a moment in time, when a people and their nation drift helplessly in the current. --Langdon Cook

From Publishers Weekly
In a book that is part fly-fishing adventure and part social commentary on rural Russian life, Montaigne (former Moscow bureau chief for the Philadelphia Inquirer) casts his flies in Russia's great rivers and expertly and beautifully hooks the essence of Russia's "dilapidated landscape, inhabited by people who knew hardship as intimately as we might a member of the family." Montaigne fishes for cod and herring off the Solovetsky Islands in the Barents Sea, and for salmon on the Kola PeninsulaAwhere he first meets Russia's new and often unethical businessman trying to make a money off Western sportsmen. He embarks eastward on the trans-Siberian railroad, where he is accosted by one of the railway's ubiquitous stern women train attendants and almost drugged by three women thieves. His first stop is on the Volga River for Russia's famous sturgeon, pike and perch. He then travels to Lake Baikal and Kamchatka, where he encounters many more people, rendering their tales in an evenhanded manner that often captures the poor quality of Russian life. As far as his fishing is concerned, he catches some, loses a few and often doesn't get so much as a bite in Russia's polluted, over-fished waters. And when he does land the big one, he resigns himself to giving it to his hungry Russian guides. In Russia, fishing is not a sport but a way of life, and he is often ridiculed for using such an ineffective method of catching something so precious. Montaigne's enlightened travelogue will appeal not only to fly-fishing enthusiasts but to anyone wanting to know more about Russia and what makes it reel and spin.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 275 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1 edition (May 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312185952
• ISBN-13: 978-0312185954
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,123,896 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Fishing Book" that Goes to the Heart of the Russian People, March 13, 1999

By A Customer

A great deal has been written about what was once the Soviet Union. Some predates the formation of what Ronald Reagan once called "the evil empire" and other parts cover the years since its dissolution. A couple of volumes--John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World and David Remnick's Lenin's Tomb--even appeared on the list of this century's one-hundred most important pieces of journalism. Maybe the number of books about this part of the world will eventually rival the biographies of Marilyn Monroe in total words. One of the latest entries in this literature, and certainly one of the best, is Fen Montaigne's Reeling in Russia. I have two friends now engaged in commerce in this part of the globe and each loudly proclaims this work the best representation of the lives of the Russian people. Some critics have compared Montaigne, for five years the Moscow correspondent of the Philadelphia Inquirer, to Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux. For me, though, the two writers who come to mind are James/Jan Morris and Jonathan Raban. Both of them qualify as "travel writers"; more than that, they uncannily capture the essence and the spirit of the people about whom they write. Montaigne has a literal "hook" around which he constructs his narrative. He fishes his way around the former Soviet Union. With fly rod in hand he travels from place to place, specific types of fish in exotic locales his quarry. Classifying this as a fishing book though is like categorizing Moby Dick as a story about a whale. Montaigne, neither a particularly accomplished fisherman nor an even mildly obsessed one, has a much bigger target. He wants to learn what has happened to the people among whom he lived and worked. And he also desires to find out about the types of Russians who inhabit some of the far stretches of a country he did not previously have the time or freedom to explore. From his very first adventure, near the Solovetsky Islands in northern Russia, Montaigne has his readers hooked. His impassioned and well-crafted prose connects us with types of Russians who seldom make it in front of cameras (or authors for that matter). We learn of their hopes and much more often about their frustrations. We follow him around the world's largest country, soaking up both important facts and fascinating trivia. Along the way, the author paints portraits of memorable individuals and the Russian people as a whole. There are no acceptable excuses to not buy and read this book. If you have no interest in fishing you have nothing to fear. If fishing makes your blood run as cold as that of these swimming creatures, both large and small, you will find else much in Reeling in Russia to keep you fully engaged. If you happen to actually like this sport you will have an extra bonus; you can imagine yourself in the flywaters in which Montaigne wades and learn about a fascinating people in the process.

George A. Singer

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unique Personal Journey, But Little More, February 13, 2001

By	J. Creamer (Perpignan France) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I do a fair amount of work in Russia, so I was interested in Reeling in Russia to deepen my understanding of this complex country. Essentially a travel diary, this book provides a very personal view of the author's fishing trip through Russia, remarkably made almost exclusively by land and water. Given his fluency in Russian and his laid-back--bordering on reckless--approach to travel planning, Montaigne's book provides a fascinating and truly unique view of Russia in 1996. This approach, however, is also the book's weakness. Montaigne's encounters are wonderful to read in and of themselves, but they rarely add up to more than snapshots of a point in time. Montaigne's journalistic background prevails as he recounts the here and now (actually the then and there in '96) without fleshing things out into a more enduring book. So if you're looking for an analysis or current history of Russia's transition out of the Soviet period, you will probably not be satisfied with this book. Otherwise, I do recommend Reeling in Russia for those seeking a tale of adventures crossing the chaos and desolation of 'early post-Soviet Russia', in meeting some of the human faces of this extraordinary culture, or simply for fans of this diary style of travel writing.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars He would make Hemingway Proud!, November 27, 1999

By	David M.Craig (webster, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reeling In Russia: An American Angler In Russia (Paperback)

I could not put this book down! His descriptions of everyday Russians and their fight for survival was riveting. When he described sights, sounds and smells, I could see, hear and smell each one. I am going to re-read this one many times over. I've never been to Russia, but this book took me there!