Customer Reviews
Review of Silent Riders of the Sea
This historical novel is set in 1930, and takes place on board a fishing vessel.
The author, John Gerard Fagan, has an impressive way with words and imagery, his use of language and striking metaphors being standout features of the novel.
It is told in an interesting and rarely-encountered way, as a work of free verse, like a long prose poem. For some, I suppose, this may take some getting used to. But the majority of readers of literary fiction will quickly adapt.
In terms of form it is not a million miles away from Solar Bones by Mike McCormack, a novel which takes a similarly radical approach to narrative form, and which won the Goldsmiths Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award.
While it is too soon to know whether Silent Riders of the Sea will win any awards, what I can tell you is that it is definitely worth your time. It will very quickly transport you to a world of hardship that is (thank God) for the most part forgotten in the U.K. Fagan’s writing is so vivid you will come close to enduring the hardships that Jack, the protagonist, endures. You will certainly feel for Jack and you will be taken on a highly-charged emotional journey.
So read this book, by all means.
A word of caution, though. If you are looking for an uplifting novel, this isn’t it. Silent Riders of the Sea, for all its poetic inclinations, is a gritty read, and is utterly unsparing in its attention to uncomfortable detail. Your emotions while reading it are likely to encompass pity and fear, and perhaps even horror.
You will not leave this book feeling uplifted. You will leave it feeling the same way you might after watching, say, a performance of King Lear. You will have the impression you have witnessed an unfolding of terrible events, and the experience will probably bring home to you how blessed you are to be living the life you have.
Which is the point of tragedy, isn’t it?
Written in a style reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', this book is hard to put down. As tough and dark as the subject matter and it's topics may be, you're genuinely immersed in the journey and it's narrative.
Not necessarily for the faint hearted, but amazing literature rarely is!
Looking forward to future works from this author!!!!
Silent Riders of the Sea is a book that breaks your heart and leaves you staring into space. The most beautifully written book I have read this year.
The writing is sparse but so well crafted; I felt I was there frozen with grief. Fagan is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. The village in Scotland Jack was from reminded me of my mother's in Sweden. And we lost many of our men to the sea.
I wrote a pirate book almost 30 years ago about a mutiny at sea, so these kind of sea stories (all-be-it minus the pirates) always appeal to me. Silent Riders of the Sea is very well written and takes this kind of rise against the machine story in a different direction from what I have read before. While I prefer happily ever after books I understood from the tone in this story that Fagan was going along a different path.