The Book of Eels

[TW: cruelty to animals, beyond simply plain fishing.]

First things first: eels truly are fascinating, not just in themselves but as an indicator of what a wondrous world we live in and how many mysteries remain. This book does a wonderful job covering the eel's biology and the convoluted history of how humans have learned it, step by painstaking step. There's much more: an informative and respectful deep dive into the life and work of Rachel Carson, and ditto but slightly less so on Sigmund Freud; personal memoir focusing on Svensson's relationship with his father; musings on ecology; a baffling tangent on religion that I had to skip. Worthy subjects all, but the jumping-around between threads, in linear book form, did not work for me.

For a shorter, more focused intro to the fascination of eels, I emphatically recommend this Radiolab episode.

The more we learn about the workings of this world, the more we cherish the mysteries that remain. The eel - its multiple transformation, its migration patterns, its as-of-yet unobserved reproduction - has been one of those elusive riddles that has obsessed scientists for centuries. Svensson writes a wonderful little book that's part science history, part personal memoir, part musings on the nature of mysteries and death.

Netgalley ARC. I finished this last minute. I, of course, was interested in learning about the eel, and I did. But I feel like the book meanders in a sophomoric philosophical fashion, which prompted me to take way longer than I should have reading it. His prose is best when he's detailing his eel fishing adventures with his father. But even there, he forgoes familial intimacy in favor of heavily detailed descriptions of fishing itself. Which I get. It was bonding time with his father. But, subjectively, there were moments that were too graphic for this vegetarian. If have preferred straight science and history without the pontificating. And the weirdly proselytizing moments mentioning Christianity that didn't fit, especially for an ostensibly irreligious writer.

In short, I wanted more eel and less weird babble about Freud's weirdness about Italian women.