Fishing the Jumps: A Novel
By Lamar Herrin
()
About this ebook
In his latest novel, award-winning writer Lamar Herrin highlights the art of storytelling and the value of friendship with a lush, outdoor landscape serving as a backdrop. Set over the course of a weekend spent fishing on an Adirondack lake, two middle-aged friends—Jim McManus and Walter Kidman—sip Jim Beam on the rocks and share stories of memory and camaraderie as the past and present meld to reveal that what happens in the past rarely stays there.
Herrin explores the kaleidoscopic effect of memory while examining the rise and fall of life in the South. Presented is a story about a displaced southerner who tells the account of a family whose fortune was made in the post-World War II apparel industry, but it is the extended family that claims the narrator’s attention and sympathy, the grandparents, the aunts and uncles and cousins, and the stories told and retold about those family members until they reach the status of myth. It is a novel of two lakes—the small glacial one where Jim and Walter fish and exchange stories, and the southern one, created when a dam was built and numerous mountain settlements were flooded. It is a novel chronicling the aftermath of World War II, who won what, and when the time comes, who stands to lose.
Lyrical and poetic yet playful and entertaining, Fishing the Jumps is more than just fishing tales. It is a seamless and haunting novel that is ultimately a story of the deep and necessary relationship between two men and the binding and nourishing effect of family—not only of an extended family, but of a whole community, and in fact, a whole region.
Praise for Fishing the Jumps
“Deliberate and gorgeous, with a mastery of description and a searing command of American culture. Fishing the Jumps is quiet, thoughtfully told, but with a thrashing undercurrent . . . . What seems almost a low-key dialogue on a placid lake is actually a turbulent family history that refuses to sink to the bottom of memory. This makes an elegant structure for a fish story that plumbs the nature of storytelling itself. It is a thrilling, intense novel to read. I was hooked.” —Bobbie Ann Mason, author of Patchwork and The Girl in the Blue Beret
“Herrin’s writing is vivid, lyrical, and intense. But the glory of this novel is Herrin’s gift for recreating a particular time and place, the decades after WWII, the exuberance of summers by the mountain lake, the brilliance of Little Howie Whalen building a textile empire. These characters, and this time, come alive in a way that haunts the reader.” —Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek
“Lamar Herrin may be the best writer of whom you have never heard . . . there’s no denying that Fishing the Jumps is a work of genius . . . Herrin’s narrative style is seamless, his emotional intelligence expert. . . . [A] bildungsroman, a mystery, and a prose poem, too, in its lush, layered honesty, verbal ingenuity, and elegant humanity.” —Linda Elisabeth LaPinta, Kentucky Humanities
Lamar Herrin
LAMAR HERRIN's short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Epoch, and The Paris Review, which awarded him its Aga Kahn fiction prize. He is author of the novel Fractures. He is professor emeritus of creative writing and contemporary literature at Cornell University and has taught many bestselling authors such as Philip Gourevitch, Philipp Meyer, and Melissa Bank. Together with his wife, Amparo, he splits his time between Ithaca, New York and Valencia, Spain.
Read more from Lamar Herrin
Fractures: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5House of the Deaf Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRomancing Spain Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFather Figure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Fishing the Jumps
Related ebooks
My Moby Dick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Valley of Light: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Fishing Talk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Patch Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Incomplete Dangler Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHeadwaters: The Adventures, Obsession and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tales of Fishes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Habits of Trout: And Other Unsolved Mysteries Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ole Man: Episodes of the Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Otterly Ridiculous Riddle: Cornellis Island Paranormal Cozy Mysteries, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Royal Purple Game of the Sea Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWeb of Greed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFor Heaven’S Sake! Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDead Water Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Joe Wayring at Home Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBig Tuna Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSermons in Stones: Tales of family, friends, & fly fishing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPayback is a Bitch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn the Company of Rivers: An Angler's Stories and Recollections Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Amphibian Diaries: A Field Guide for Truth-Seekers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWide and Deep: Tales and Recollections from a Master Maine Fishing Guide Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Leaper: Adventures in a Commercial Salmon Fishing Boat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Rose of Old St. Louis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBeyond Hunting and Fishing: The Last Experiences and Other Thoughts by a Guy Who Couldn't Quit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJust So Stories (Barnes & Noble Digital Library) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings1809 Ben Brown On the Beach Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKetchikan: A Short Story from Legend of a Suicide Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eye of the Tiger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Phantoms of Houghs Neck Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBarney Blake, the Boy Privateer; or, The Cruise of the Queer Fish Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Fiction For You
The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anna Karenina: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nigerwife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Tan's Circle of Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Salvage the Bones: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Fishing the Jumps
0 ratings0 reviews