Chris_P's Reviews > The Fisherman

This is a tough one to rate and I seem to be ripped between 2 and 3 stars. Either way, my opinion is rather unpopular as it seems, what with all the 4 and 5-star reviews here.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I'm really strict when it comes to horror. For me, horror is a very delicate matter with aspects as many as those of the human psychology. Rarely can a film or novel scare me lately, and I'm not talking about jump-scares. I guess my being so demanding makes me either a perfect judge on horror, or a terrible one. That said, The Fisherman didn't scare me, although it did manage to send a tingle down my spine a couple of times, which is certainly no small thing, I assure you. Now, I don't mean to say that the ability to scare is all a horror novel is about. There are a bunch of other factors that make a horror novel good, such as the characters, the plot, the writing and pretty much everything that makes every other novel good. So, what do we have here?

The Fisherman belongs to what seems to be called literary horror, a term which, until recently, I wasn't familiar with. What I can say for sure is that Langan can surely write. He borrowed various elements from classic novels of the genre, basing his story on the Lovecraftian cosmic horror and, while he could have merely copied from here and there, he preferred to put his own signature to his writing and create something not exactly original, but fresh nonetheless. His writing style was what really hit home, with phrases such as

He had a lantern jaw that made him look as if he were perpetually holding something in his mouth that was too hot to swallow

Almost immediately, Jacob’s first thought—This man has a stream inside his house, too?—is replaced by another—We are not in the house, anymore—and a third—We never were

and

“You cut me. You son of a bitch.”
This did not seem the appropriate moment to point out that I had done so in response to his effort to crush my skull with the rock he continued to hold

which were like music to my (inner) ears.

The form of The Fisherman, however, is where its true originality lies and the detail which eventually didn't work for me. As it has been said in other reviews, there is a story within the story. The problem is, it's not clear which is within which. The main story starts normally but right when you start to sink in it, there is a flashback that extends to more than 150 pages and which ends up being longer than the one the book started with. A fact that somewhat confused me and made it hard for me to stay focused, while the endless descriptions only managed to make matters worse in that respect. I had the feeling that the story hasted when it should be slower and lagged when it should be faster, with the latter case being far more frequent. Therefore, in my opinion, the novel fails to build up the tension needed to achieve a climax and that's evident once more in the end, where all the action takes place in the chapter before last. What saved the day for me, was the clever twist in the final chapter, linking real-life events with those of the book.

An average idea and a decent execution by an obviously talented author. Yet, it left me feeling like something was annoyingly missing in the end. 2.5 is the verdict but I'll go with 3.