Imagine being stuck in an abusive relationship that can go on for eternity, with no end in sight. That's where the real horror of this book lies.

Right from the get-go I was rooting for Constanta, and I loved watching her grow. I really enjoyed the second person epistolary narrative. The prose is poetic and lends itself well to the mood of the novel, and it was a pleasure to read at a sentence-level. I breezed through this in less than a day.

I only wish there was more depth. I wanted more from the characters, more story, more of the relationship itself, more pages, just more!

Rather than the cosmic horror that it is categorized as, The Fisherman was more an exploration of male grief and friendship. It is written beautifully, with so many evocative sentences that just transported me into that weird world. The narrative structure is unique too, a story in a story, which really enriched the lore by giving it the feeling of being something very old, historic, ancient.

Unfortunately, that very framing device dragged down the pacing of the story for me. The main narrative, with Abe, was the one where the author spent a lot of time developing the characters and getting the reader to emotionally connect with them. And then, we got the story-within-a-story that went on much longer than it had to, that we never got emotionally invested in beyond the surface-level curiosity of wanting to find out what the big deal was. By the time we got back to the main storyline, I'd lost the emotional connection I had with Abe and Dan at the beginning.

I still enjoyed the last part of the book, but I just would have liked to spend more time exploring the characters, and less time on building lore that didn't feel all that impressive, horrifying, or even relevant to me. I say 'not relevant' because the juxtaposition of something so personal as grief didn't really gel with the impersonal horror lore, which is probably why I didn't feel any sort of impact upon finishing this. I guess when we're confronted with something so hard to grasp, I'd expect we'd have more of an existential crisis about the meaninglessness or terror of it all, but the characters don't ever really go there. The grief theme isn't explored much in this middle story either. So, that was slightly unsatisfying. The final chapter, especially the last scene, did send a little chill down my spine though. I thought, FINALLY WE GET THE CREEPS!

And I have to reiterate, the prose was GORGEOUS!

“All loss is not created equal, you see. Loss is—it’s like a ladder you don’t know you’re standing at the top of and that reaches down, way down past the loss of your job, your possessions, your home; past the loss of your parents, your spouse, your children; down to the loss of your very life—and, I've since come to believe, past even that.”

“I know it’s not the darkest month, and I know it’s not the coldest or the snowiest month, but February is gray in a way I can’t explain.”

I just wish I'd enjoyed this more than I did, but slogging through the middle of this book was rough. Also, fishing! I don't get the hype!