Listen, in keeping with what I have always taught you, that in every bad thing, you can always dig up some good things, I will tell you that you could be a different kind of fishermen. Not the kind that fish at a filthy swamp like the Omi-Ala, but fishermen of the mind. Go-getters. Children who will dip their hands into rivers, seas, oceans of life and become successful: doctors, pilots, professors, lawyers. Eh?The Fishermen is a book of contrasts, about a country perched on the boundary between two worlds. Set in the Nigerian town of Akure in 1996, it focuses on the middle class Agwu family (and in particular the four eldest sons) who, with a banker for a father and a market vendor for a mother, both draw their water from a well and play Western video games. The mother is a devout Christian who snaps her fingers over her head to dispel bad spirits. The father speaks in village parables but dreams of sending his sons to Canada for a “Western Education”. Writ large, the book is a blend of Anansi tale (and especially with Ben's habit of comparing characters to animals) and Shakespearean tragedy (and especially with the inevitability of an unhappy outcome following upon the father's hubris); writ large, The Fishermen can be read as a parable of Nigeria's own history. In its details, the book blends the naive perspective of Ben's eyewitness account at nine years old with his more mature evaluation of the events as he recalls the story as an adult; in its details, The Fishermen is a compelling domestic story of a family doing its best to transcend turbulent circumstances. The Fishermen is a masterwork of form, fleshed out with some of the most vivid imagery I've ever read.
(The corpse) was, in fact, the only one dressed differently at his funeral. The sparkling white shirt and trousers he wore gave him the appearance of an angel who – caught unawares during a physical manifestation on earth – had his bones broken to prevent him from returning back to heaven.I hadn't read any spoilers before picking up The Fishermen, and I'd recommend future readers avoid even the book's dust jacket; for what eventually becomes as inevitable as any Greek tragedy is only obvious in retrospect. Much of the storytelling is circular, with characters mentioned in passing and then having their importance filled in later, and ultimately, every detail is deliberate and of import. Even the title hints at many layers of meaning: while it definitely has a biblical ring, the local Omi-Ala River hadn't been fit for fishermen to visit since before the Christian missionaries came to the area (and back then, the river itself was considered a god).
As a work of contrasts, the Nigeria of The Fishermen feels neither as modern and urban as found in Americanah nor as old-fashioned as that of Things Fall Apart (although the latter is used as a bedtime story among two of the brothers). Author Chigozie Obioma salts the narrative with phrases from the local Yoruban and Igbo languages, but as the narrator Ben explains that English is used for formal speech and education, Obioma often uses “big” English words when more informal language might work better (and, yet, I'm assuming their use was intentional). Some passages left me grasping for meaning:
When he lowered his head, I saw the middle of his scalp where his baldness, unlike Grandfather's, had stopped its spurn as a mere arc of hairless portion hidden away in the midst of a ring of hair.I'm not going to add any plot, simply concluding that Obioma's is a fascinating new voice and The Fishermen isn't out of place beside books by more seasoned authors on 2015's Man Booker Prize longlist. I will definitely look forward to discovering what Obioma comes up with next.
In case it was too spoilery, I didn't add the following to the main review, but want to save it here. This is the kind of passage that I really admired in the book:
The plunge, I pictured, must have been quick. As his head sank, it must have first hit the rock that protruded from the side of the well. The contact must have been followed in succession by the sound of bursting, of crashing skull, of breaking bones, of blood purling, then spilling and swirling in his head. His brain must have scattered into smithereens, the veins that connected it to other parts of his head uncoupling. His tongue must have thrust out of his mouth at the moment of the contact, tearing his eardrums apart like an antique veil, and pouring a tenth of his teeth into the floor of his mouth like a pack of dice. A synchrony of noiseless reactions must have followed this. For a short time, his mouth must have kept uttering something inaudible, like a pot of water bubbling as his body convulsed. This must have been the peak of it all. The convulsion must have started to gradually let go of him, calm returning to his bones. Then a peace not of this world must have descended on him, calming him to deadly stillness.
*****
As I concluded with, The Fishermen is another title from this year Man Booker Dozen, and still not my favourite:
Man Booker Longlist 2015:
Bill Clegg - Did You Ever Have a Family
Anne Enright - The Green Road
Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings
Laila Lalami - The Moor's Account
Tom McCarthy - Satin Island
Chigozie Obioma - The Fishermen
Andrew O’Hagan - The Illuminations
Marilynne Robinso - Lila
Anuradha Roy - Sleeping on Jupiter
Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways
Anna Smaill - The Chimes
Anne Tyler - A Spool of Blue Thread
Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life
I was really pleased that A Brief History of Seven Killings took the prize; even more pleased that it didn't go to A Little Life as seemed inevitable.
