Book Review… The thorny road to healing

May 21, 2017 Book Review…, Features / Columnists

Book: The Fisherman
Author: LeRoy Martin James
Reviewer: Dr Glenville Ashby

LeRoy Martin James captures the Jekyll and Hyde of Father Time in measured, constrained

The book cover of The Fisherman

terms. Hemmed in by tradition and protocol, his writing fails to dare, but it manages to hold serve. There is a need for artistic perfection. Every scene is painstakingly set; every hue and shade, deliberately recorded; every dialogue basking in literalism. James is consummately conservative and we are served the rudiments of sound writing. And there is so much to savour here.
The Fisherman portrays an island imaginary in raw terms. James’ fictional fishing village is idyllic, at least on the surface. The people are simple, unpolluted by the pretensions of urban living. They are drawn to the impulse and beneficence of the sea. Drysdale and his vessel stretch their imagination. It is the pride of a people longing for magic and creativity.
Drysdale waters an arid existence. He is the father of two boys competing for his attention and two women sparring over his resources. There are stark, multiple statements by the writer. Life never lets up on the weary nor is ever compassionate to innocents. Life metes out its brutality, leveling the field of all comers.
Rolph experiences the passing of his mother at a tender age. He struggles to find meaning – to win – despite the hand he is served. Of his mother, his father said, “She done dead and gone. It is useless thinking about her now.”
James follows with, “That was what the man [Drysdale] had told him once, when he was smaller and in greater need of parental care and consolation. The boy had not said another word. That evening, he had sat in a corner by himself and wiped tears flowing like a silent stream, down his cheeks. He had long given up all hopes; his father seemed to care very little about him and his happiness.”
He learns that a young man named Allan is his brother. His world already suffering “violence” and emptiness is again is taken by force. The stormy relationship between the boys seems implacable but abruptly quiets, and they bond. A thorny path leads to healing, many agree.
And when life seems to have simmered, Rolph is called to the plate another time to grapple with the sudden demise of Sophia, a woman his father loved. Shell-shocked by the dreadful turn of events, Drysdale collapses. Is he another victim of death’s overreach? Rolph ventures out to sea seeking medical help. He just cannot take a chance. He well knows that death assails us indiscriminately, with no regard for boundaries.
Rolph has always been troubled, strapped for psychological nurturing. “His father,” we learn, “probably had his interest at heart, but he had a way of keeping his thoughts to himself, hidden behind a coldness which made him almost a stranger.”
But he is not alone. His half brother, Allan, starved for love, also needs validation from his father. His mother, an incendiary woman is a past lover of the fisherman who walks a tight rope. There is palpable tension between the two. Allan is doubly victimized. For sure, appearances are deceptive. Beneath the tranquility, simplicity of bucolic living, the heart and mind are unruly.
The Fisherman teaches forbearance. Life, cruel as it is, offers redemption. The whirling cycles of life is captured following the Sophia’s death: “Around midnight a group of men came, carrying musical instruments. They sat down together and immediately caused a change in the air…[T]hey began making music, strumming out tunes both melodious and solemn, which soon caught hold of everyone. What had begun as an event of sadness soon turned into one of joyful songs of praise…In the east the darkness was thinning away, a sign that the new day was not far off.”
Not long after, howling winds and gushing water destroys property as “small crowds gathered everywhere, talking viewing with consternation the work of the Almighty.” Still insatiable, the sea confronts Tom, a friend and employee of Drysdale desperately seeking to salvage what’s left of his house. Will the dark side of Providence back off this one time? No such luck.
But Nature always restores balance. “The river,” we read “was back to normal, but with the banks much cleaner than they were before the flood. In the clear water, the fishes looked as though filled with new life.”ý And again, mercy is shown upon the two brothers torn apart by cruel circumstances.
Surely, The Fisherman offers hope amid despair. It delivers the enduring message of love – the eternal truth that heals broken and forlorn spirits. It is a truth that unites families torn by excesses and the icy hand of nature. James, the reluctant messenger, delivers unassumingly and poignantly.

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The Fisherman by LeRoy Martin James
ISBN 978-976-648-330-2
Publisher: Caribbean Educational Publishers, Trinidad and Tobago