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Summary: the fear and the fury of 100 foot waves
Review: very interesting and well paced book, brings the fear and the fury of 100 foot waves and the lives of the people who choose to be among them
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Summary: Styron Praises "Perfect Storm"
Review: Last night at a reading given by honored American author William Styron ("Confessions of Nat Turner", Sophie's Choice"), Mr. Styron was asked which books he had read recently which countered his observation of the trend in America away from the "love of the written word". He replied that "Perfect Storm" was a "classic tale of man against the elements", and he predicted that it was likely to become "one of the classics". He called the tale "fascinating". On the basis of my respect for Mr. Styron, I may give this book a try despite the lukewarm reviews herein; I suppose Faulkner might also have been occasionally tagged with the description "boring", and I'd be worse off in the world if I'd have let this criticism stand in the way of my discovery of his genius. Note that the "5" represents my lack of objective knowledge of this book, not my subjective reaction to it.
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Summary: Great idea moderatly well executed
Review: A terrific idea for a story that was told with a point of view that seemed to jump from event to event and did not fully allow the reader to get a feel for the action on the Andrea Gail. Nontheless it is well worth the time but this is definitly a book story driven as opposed to driven by great writing.
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Summary: When it rains it bores
Review: When first attempting to digest the impact and possible significance of Mr. Junger's "A Perfect Storm" there was a moment of confusion which,unlike Mr. Junger's storm, cleared quite quickly and dramatically. Left in its wake was this feeling about the book and it's author: "ain't been there, ain't done that."
With speculation fast becoming somewhat of a national pastime, perhaps the next bestseller of this genre should be "To Di For", the breathless, racy last moments in the lives of a princess,a playboy and a luxury sedan.
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Summary: A Storm Of Detail - A Puddle Of Plot
Review: Sebastian Junger sails us into a promising plot, but a storm of technical detail washes away the suspense.
Imagining the last moments of a Glouster sword fishing vessel, The Perfect Storm hooks us with textured characters and a grim setting. Each fisherman navigates between despair and danger in boarding the doomed boat. Upon filling our nostrils with dark anticipation, Junger constantly detours to dreary details about swordfishing, wave theory and weather development. The tension drowns in equations.
A promising current cruises us to an endangered National Guard rescue team. Again, the opportunity to visit the souls of floundering heroes is diluted by distracting tangents on their training and equipment.
Maybe Junger focused too much on the Glouster sword boat, and feared the lack of eyewitness information compromised the non-fiction status. Adding the textbook bilge didn't give the 240 page attempt more bulk than a minnow.
More harrowing stories, about other survivors
from this Perfect Storm, and less technology, would have navigated this literary vessel into more satisfying seas.
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Summary: Enjoyable, but ....
Review: I agree with most of the reviewers who praised this book, but I did find that it became much less interesting after the author was done with the Andrea Gail saga. Thereafter, it became simply a bunch of disparate short stories connected only by the fact of the storm itself. However that mere similarity was not enough to engage me as much as the Andrea Gail part of the story. Also, while I would certainly recommend the book, I agree with the reviewer below who commented that it is absolutely NOT as good a read as Into Thin Air
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Summary: Unwarranted adulation of authorial speculation
Review: Mr. Junger deserves a kind of literary praise: for finding so many uses for the conditional and subjunctive in a piece of narrative non-fiction. The primary problem with this piece of honest work is that the writer was an honest man--he had no idea what really happened on the storm-ravaged decks of the Andrea Gail, so he told us so. What might have happened...
He probably went down below...
If this had happened, then this might have followed...
I, like many summer readers spotted this book on every other beach blanket, and wondered about a Perfect Storm. But as the Andrea Gail began its fabricatedly detailed descent into the broiling brine, I slammed it shut. That's enough, I thought, regarding the chop off of Block Island. Sebastian Junger doesn't know what happened. I don't know what happened. Only those men know what happened, and they have taken their story to a deep and permanent grave. Leave it to them. Mr. Junger has a handy way with summarizing what can be highly technical and stupefying detail. He writes nicely, and compellingly, about the weather, for instance, in the chapters spanning an imagined binge in Gloucester and and an imagined death at sea. I liked that weather stuff. And every time he returned, his subjunctive tail between his legs, to the story he had, inexplicably, chosen to reconstruct, I grew angrier with his choice.
The endless comparisons between this book and Krakauer's Into Thin Air are misguided, other than comparing two tragedies that share the non-fiction column on the NYT Best Seller List. I would choose another hybrid, a much greater bestseller than Mr. Junger has yet to realize, Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil, as a more apt shelf-mate. Mr. Krakauer lived through an extraordinary event, and he is paying a spiritual price for his great journalistic fortune. Mr. Junger has catapaulted off a lever of what might have been, and is scratching his head all the way to the bank
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Summary: Interesting but lacked a few easy details.
Review: Overall I liked The Perfect Storm and recommend it. In fact, I was up until 2 a.m. reading it. Good re-creation of the boredom-terror of being on a fishing boat, and of the thrashing waves. Most fascinating to me was the rescue of the Satori (sailboat) because Sue Bylander is my cousin.
Nevertheless, the book seemed carelessly edited (typos, repetition, boring military aircraft jargon). Perhaps in a next edition the author can add a few illustrations such as a reprint of those last weather faxes, a diagram or satellite photo of the converging storm systems, Gloucester harbor, or Gloucester's statue of the sailor dedicated to "They that go down to the sea in ships."
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Summary: Cluttered at first but good technical reading
Review: The detailed description of what it's like to drown was the most probable I've read. The mechanics of big weather at sea - dynamics
of waves - was informative but not a copy of reference text either. Junger does right by the "PJs" by giving them credit for what it takes
to do their job and the tough life of a fisherman. One of the most controversial parts is how junger reckons that less oil in the water is why the waves are getting larger due to lower surface
tension....
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Summary: The sea is not a friendly place and you can't BS the ocean.
Review: My wife and I lived aboard a blue water saliboat for 5 years and put over 25,000 ocean miles on the boat. She was unable to finish this book because the pictures painted of the men and the description of the seas were all too real. I have read 100's of books about sailing, the oceans, heavy weather at sea, and simular theams. This is one of the best ever written. This book is a keeper.
Anyone planning or dreaming of offshore sailing in a small boat should read it. Not to become discourged, and not take that trip. But to understand the reality of the ocean, and how sometimes you will lose out there, no matter what you do
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