Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador (Vintage Departures) - Softcover

Gimlette, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1400078539 ISBN 13: 9781400078530

Publisher: Vintage, 2006

Synopsis

Newfoundland is one of the most intriguing places in North America, a land of breathtaking but cruel beauty, populated by some of the saltiest, oddest characters you'll ever find. In Theatre of Fish, John Gimlette vividly describes the dense forests and forbidding coastlines and recounts the colorful and often tragic history of the region. He introduces us to the inhabitants, from the birds and moose to the descendants of the outlaws, deserters, and fishermen who settled this eastern edge of North America. Leavened with irreverence and affection, this is an irresistible portrait of life in extremis.

About this title

Product Description:

Theatre of Fish John Gimlette's travels through the eastern extreme of the Americas, which mirrors that of Dr Eliot Curwen, his great-grandfather, who spent a summer there as a doctor in 1893. Using Curwen's journal, John Gimlette revisits the places his great-grandfather encountered, and along the way explores his own links with this land. Full description

Review:

"Newfoundlers themselves must be God's gift to travel writers. In John Gimlette's frothy treatment, the island is absolutely teeming with impossibly colorful characters spouting nonstop entertainment . . . Gimlette is laugh-out-loud funny." -The New York Times Book Review

"John Gimlette is attracted to bizarre places and writes about them with often withering irony [and] surrealist panache. . . . An absurd and entertaining book." -National Geographic

"Oddly compelling. . . . The reward is the feast of stories gathered from taverns and ferry rides and old journals: drownings, battles with 'Esquimaux' greenhorns challenging an unforgiving wilderness, folks who still use dogsleds because in tough times, 'You can't eat a snowmobile.'" -The Washington Post

"Terrific stuff. . . . A dazzlingly multifaceted portrait of the region. . . . A hugely entertaining book in which the interest never flags. . . . As a descriptive writer, a master of the telling observation and the well-chosen epithet, [Gimlette] is in the highest class." -The Daily Telegraph

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1400078539
• ISBN 13: 9781400078530
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400