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"Part H Is for Hawk, part The Soul of an Octopus, The Book of Eels is both a meditation on the world's most elusive fish--the eel--and a reflection on the human condition. Remarkably little is known about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla. So little, in fact, that scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, been obsessed with what has become known as the "eel question": Where do eels come from? What are they? Are they fish or some other kind of creature altogether? Even today, in an age of advanced science, no one has ever seen eels mating or giving birth, and we still don't understand what drives them, after living for decades in freshwater, to swim great distances back to the ocean at the end of their lives. They remain a mystery. Drawing on a breadth of research about eels in literature, history, and modern marine biology, as well as his own experience fishing for eels with his father, Patrik Svensson crafts a mesmerizing portrait of an unusual, utterly misunderstood, and completely captivating animal. In The Book of Eels, we meet renowned historical thinkers, from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud to Rachel Carson, for whom the eel was a singular obsession. And we meet the scientists who spearheaded the search for the eel's point of origin, including Danish marine biologist Johannes Schmidt, who led research efforts in the early twentieth century, catching thousands upon thousands of eels, in the hopes of proving their birthing grounds in the Sargasso Sea. Blending memoir and nature writing at its best, Svensson's journey to understand the eel becomes an exploration of the human condition that delves into overarching issues about our roots and destiny, both as humans and as animals, and, ultimately, how to handle the biggest question of all: death. The result is a gripping and slippery narrative that will surprise and enchant."--… (more)
User reviews
At the centre of the story is the way that eels are in one sense quite familiar, everyday creatures — we may only rarely see them but we know they are around, or at least we think we do — and in another sense deeply mysterious, living important parts of their lives in ways that science has had great difficulties studying. We know, for instance, that eel larvae appear to migrate across the Atlantic from the Sargasso Sea, and that sexually mature eels have been seen heading towards it, so it seems to follow that that's where eels breed, but despite many attempts, no-one has actually seen any sign of them doing it (the Japanese eel is slightly less coy than its Atlantic cousins, apparently).
It almost seems too good to be true that Sigmund Freud had his first scientific job attempting to find an eel with male sex organs, in a marine science lab in Trieste. Svensson looks at this, and many other wonderful anecdotes from the history of great scientists struggling with "the eel question". And at eels in literature, with starring roles for Graham Swift and Günter Grass, as we would expect (but no mention of Arthur Ransome, sadly). There's a little bit about eels in various religions and popular beliefs, although this doesn't go quite as deep as the more zoological parts of the book. And quite a lot, as we would expect, about how eels now seem to be under threat from human activity, and how their obscure life-cycle complicates things (species are counted by numbers of breeding adults, but for the eel that's exactly the thing we know least about!).
The personal story of Svensson's relationship with his working-class father, as expressed through their night-time eel-fishing expeditions together, alternates with these more general sections of the book. And they are, like most fishing stories, much more about the fishermen than about the fish (or indeed the fishing). Quite moving at times, but also often touching and funny.
An interesting and lively book, even if ichthyology isn't your thing.
Svensson has been around eels since his childhood years in Sweden, where his father taught him eel fishing. He cites eels in literature, scientific studies, and Basque traditions. He weaves together chapters of nature writing and personal stories. I particularly enjoyed the touching scenes with his father toward the end.
The author has a point of view and is not shy in expressing his opinions. It is a nice change of pace. I tend to enjoy books about creatures of our natural world with secrets we have not yet discovered. If you enjoy great nature writing and scientific mysteries, this is a good one to pick up.
4.5
A while back I lived in a remote/weird settlement in an area surrounded by lakes, rivers and what are referred to as drainage ditches. In every lake or waterway in NZ there are eels. That particular place was an eel migration point from the local lake. The eels would gather round the seaward side of the lake until we had a huge southerly storm when the shingle bank would be wet, then the eels would slither out of the lake and over the shingle into the sea then off to who knew where to breed and die.
For a while I used to catch a few eels for food. I did that until I found out that the eels were anywhere from upwards of 45 years old. At that point I stopped because I felt that having lived so long who was I to take their life when I could easily get food anywhere, this was not a life or death struggle. I have seen eels here that were between 80 and 100 years old. People I have met who climb mountais tell me that wherever you find running water, no matter how high up there will be eels there.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the fantasy is that the eels migrate to the Sargasso Sea to breed and die. Even though the Sargasso Sea has no borders apart from 4 ocean currents and is a "sea within a sea", a gyre if you will, and not one single human being has ever seen a single eel in the Sargasso Sea.
The simple truth is that we know nothing of these creatures. I have seen that most people have a visceral reaction to them if seen up close. I also know that eel blood is a neurotoxin to humans. They seem to occupy a place nearer to our subconscious than our conscious selves.
Personally, they remind me that we are just trouble and if the virus were to kill every single one of us the eels would just carry on as before, they would shed no tears over us and sometimes I wonder if they even know we are here.
I loved this book because it takes us to their territory, which is really a very undefined place, and not them to us.
Throughout human history they have been an enigma, it's as if on a "need to know" basis we are not on the list of those that need to know.
I heard the author interviewed and it sounded so interesting; I wasn't disappointed. Only gave 3.5 stars just because I save my high rations for books that are really my favorites. This deserves 5 stars for the ingenuity of writing.
There is a lot about the life cycle of eels that scientists still don't know. They are strange and fascinating animals. Svensson talks about what we do know about eels, and the history of how we learned what we know, including the journeys of one scientist
At the heart of this book is mystery: eels are very mysterious and have baffled scientists forever, and that's what makes them so interesting.
How to describe it? Nature writing would define it, and like the best nature writing, Svensson’s a bit philosophical about the facts and statistics he
The book also shares how the study of eels influenced Sigmund Freud in his development of psychoanalytic theory, and he shares the beauty and grace of Rachel Carson’s depiction of them in her first book. The fascination of eels for many, Carson included, stems from how confounding they have proven for efforts to pin them down and study them.
But Svensson does more than help us appreciate the slippery and hidden nature of the eel. By the time I finished this book, I felt that the eel was at the heart of the mystery of life. And one thing is certain. We are wiping them out. The parallels between them and humans are clear.
The Book of Eels is a gift to anyone who loves reading about the natural world. Whether you enjoy fishing for them, eating them, or appreciating them as overlooked wonders of the natural world, there is something in this book for you. I highly recommend this book.
Anyway, I now feel as if I should apologize to the eel, because it turns out they are deeply interesting creatures, and rather impressive ones, and every bit as deeply mysterious as the subtitle of the book suggests. All the scientific stuff in here about the things we do and don't know about eels, and how we do or why we don't know them, was absolutely fascinating to me. Some of the tangents the author goes on about famous people who studied eels and such was a bit less so, but still plenty interesting enough. I will say that for much of the book, I found his attempts at philosophizing and his reminiscences about his father, with whom he used to fish for eels, much less compelling, But damned if I didn't come around to that, too, and by the end I appreciated it as something both thoughtful and touching.