The average human will experience a plethora of emotions through their lifetime. For every positive emotion there is a negative one, yet behind all these there is a single emotion which cuts to the core of who we are and causes a pain which never truly leaves you, it’s gut wrenching and soul destroying, malignantly lingering in your heart ready to pounce and remind you of it’s presence at any given moment. It’s not heart break; it’s something worse and more unforgiving – grief.

You never move away from the shores of grief, merely learn to adapt yourself to living in the dark shadow of its grasp. Personally, I’ve experienced grief on a life changing scale. I know I’ll never fully recover from the pain that it’s inflicted on me, despite the lulls in its grasp, it’s always there. For this reason I’ve always been cautious about reading ‘The Fisherman’ by John Langan, which was released in 2016. I know the triggers in my life and for a long time after buying this book, I assumed this would be one of them. So it sat, gathering dust on my shelf for a number of years.  Having finally read the book, I can confirm that although the dark Lovecraftian tale did bring my grief to the forefront of my mind, it was an almost cathartic read. It was a chance to examine my grief and pain through the lens of someone else’s life and someone else’s loss. 

“In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true. When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumours of the Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir. It's a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.”

Grief and the aftermath of loss are the central themes of John Langan’s ‘The Fisherman’. It tells the tale of two men who are both experiencing loss in different ways. Whether it’s Abe, who’s recently loss his wife or Dan, who’s lost his wife and children, both men are processing the hardest part of loss. The “What now?”. I think in lesser writers’ hands, the physical and emotional toll of this could easily be muted or handled badly. With John Langan’s, it’s almost a form of poetry. Take for example where he write’s;

“… His grief had taken him far into a country whose borders are all most folks ever see, and from where he was, caught up in that dark land’s customs and concerns, what I was worrying over sounded so foreign I might as well have been speaking another language.”

The brunt of the story is told from Abe’s point of voice and Abe is a fantastic narrator. John Langan’s writing style excels through his protagonist. Abe is a kindly older narrator and the sections of him narrating feel like a story your grandfather would tell you. Although due to the nature of this style, there are small tangent’s that Abe goes on in the story, which might be difficult for some readers, but for me I enjoyed them. 

I’ve worked in the care sector for years and sat through many stories from patients that travel round the world to get to the point. If anything, these small tangents and diversions in the narrative enhance the character even more. The secondary character in the tale is Dan. While he is in fact the catalyst for a number of events in the novel, John Langan doesn’t allow you to spend as much time with him as we do Abe.   

It’s Dan’s story and indeed Dan’s pain and journey through the dark lands of grief that leads the novel into the firm grips of the horror genre. Whilst it might start slowly, introducing the characters and the setting of the tale in “Dutchman’s Creek”, as the story progresses the horror increases. The final section of the book, once “Der Fisher” has been introduced, is like a fever dream filled with Lovecraftian like horrors that won’t be forgotten quickly. It stops being a story of fishing and moving forward and rather becomes a quest of survival and existential horror. There are elements of “Dagon” and “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” which come through a section in the middle where the truth of Dutchman’s Creek is finally revealed. 

For me to delve to deeply into the story of “The Fisherman” in this review would be a discredit to the book, because it feels like the type of story that will touch everyone differently. You won’t have the same reaction to the dark subject matter as I did. I went in with only the briefest of understanding of the book and what it was about. So much so that when I read the final page, I had to sit and digest the journey I had been on with Abe and Dan. It wasn’t an easy read, examining grief and loss never is. However, it’s a tale that will stick with me for years and when I’m brave enough, one I am going to revisit. Only next time I won’t be leaving it sitting in my TBR pile for nearly as long as I did because as Abe so aptly states in the novel – “people’s memories are short for any sorrow that isn’t theirs.”

The Fisherman is available here.

By James Lefebure

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