Publisher's Weekly Review
Writer Alex Smyth, the narrator of this satisfying novel from Irish author Cunningham (Capital Sins), grew up in Ireland but has settled in rural Bayport, Ontario. One day he receives a letter postmarked in Toronto containing only a fishing lure, which stirs up unsettling childhood memories, some of which involve another boy, Terence Deasy. Alex thinks he "murdered someone" when he was seven, but he can't remember. As he tells his wife, Kay, "It's like there are big holes in my brain." He also feels uncomfortable that his first novel falsely eulogizes his elderly and estranged father, Dr. Patrick Smyth. Leaving Kay at home in Bayport, Alex returns to Ireland to seek answers from his father and to track down the key players from his childhood, including Terence. Cunningham artfully spins several stories at once: Kay, alone in Bayport with her doubts about their marriage and fears of a stalker; Alex seeing people and events from both a child's and an adult's perspective. Brief, cogent paragraphs about trout provide a connecting thread in this thoughtful, exquisitely told tale. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
When an Irish-born mystery writer receives an ordinary-looking brown envelope in the mail at his rural Canadian home, it is addressed to "Alex Smyth, Author." But instead of the usual letter of praise or criticism from one of his readers, the envelope contains only a surprising object folded inside a blank sheet of tissue paper. "What at first looked like a small, green insect with a black head, pale hackles and pink translucent wings lay there. Then I saw the tiny hook, curved and pointed, like a golden phallus." Though initially Alex fears he is being stalked by someone reacting to his latest book, this trout fly is actually a wordless message from the past that stirs buried memories of his boyhood in Waterford. He becomes suffused with waves of guilt and shame that have been repressed for decades. Why does he have a foreboding sense that he was responsible for a death? This unexpected plunge into a dark well of old feelings paralyzes Alex as a writer and begins to threaten his grasp on everything he values in his life, including his marriage. In order to solve the mystery, he must travel back to Ireland, to revisit his childhood and seek some sort of reconciliation with his dying father. Cunningham, whose novel "The Sea and the Silence" won the Prix de l'Europe in 2013, knows how to tell an absorbing and intricate story. The charm of this novel, which has metaphorical fly-fishing advice woven through its pages, lies in beautifully rendered observations of small, still moments. But the voice of this firstperson story is, by design, Alex's. The somewhat melodramatic sensibility of the novel's mystery-writing narrator might explain the occasionally overwrought descriptions ("the sun's rays dancing in his black curls," "the gray is spun through her hair like chalk seams through slate"), which may distract readers from the tension and suspense of the story. Even so, Cunningham is a writer who knows exactly how to cast line after line with a deftness and grace that summon the truth from the depths of the past up to the surface, at last.
