I always find it hard not fishing on the weekend but still having access to windows, so the fact that the weather would be fine for a day's fishing never escapes me. If I cannot fish myself being transported in an armchair to some distant water is perhaps the next best thing and for this little review I got to travel through Sweden with Andrew Brown, although we have never met.
Fishing in Utopia, is a memoir of life,love, politics and fishing in Sweden viewed through the eyes of a young man coming to terms with adulthood and beyond. What I have enjoyed about this book is the seamless blend of life with fishing as only one aspect rather than a stand alone character. There are no measurements of the anglers greatness or ineptitude, no wide gaps between palms or stories of catching the biggest fish in the lake just a greater depth.
There is a tangible sadness about the book that almost makes some of pages a little heavier than paper ought to be. Loss is written up with a hand that almost makes it feel like a very beautiful surgery, painful none the less. Then there are also the passages where the words effortlessly render that sublime beauty of being by the waters-edge. It is fair to say I often feel I have lived a little after reading this book, I am not sure it will make me a better fisherman but that is a big ask for any author.
