Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9783877630198
ISBN: 3877630197
Label: Spiegel
Manufacturer: Spiegel
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: 2007
Publisher: Spiegel
Studio: Spiegel

Customer Rating:
Summary: Scary, interesting, makes you think
Comment: I ENJOYED THE BOOK, BUT THERE WAS NO WAY IT COULD live up to it's hype.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Storm
Comment: Does everyone know this book is a hoax? Am I the only member of the reading public who didn't know this?

It's a terrible book, written by someone who hates reading for people who hate reading in a patronizing and revolting attempt to interest people who hate reading in reading. Yuk. The author has a lot in common with the author of The Lovely Bones: both terrible writers and cynical pompous uneducated jerks who revere nothing but their own ability to get one over on someone.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Story
Comment: `The Perfect Storm` started out as an article in `Outside` magazine, where Junger was an occasional free-lance contributor, although his day job was a lumber jack and waiting tables. When he wasn't slinging an axe or chops, he expanded the original article into a book, his first, published in 1997 when he was about 34 years old. It did well on the New York Times list and quickly went on to a big-budget star-powered movie. The natives of Gloucester, the New England fishing town at the center of the story, gave it a positive reception, which for Junger was its highest praise. In fact it made some of them famous, Linda Greenlaw went on to write her own book The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey.

Stylistically the success of the book is remarkable because the final moments of Andrea Gail, the climax of the book, are a mystery. Jungler says it was "journalism by analogy". But the effect works well by lending the account authenticity while engaging the readers imagination to fill in the blanks, making it all the more terrifying. In addition it lends a great deal of sympathy and compassion to the friends and relatives of the dead, who also live with the unknown and terrors of the minds eye. Most non-fiction authors would have no problem interjecting some fictional dialog or scenes to make the book more readable, but it would have been a lie, the truth is unknown and it showed a great deal of integrity on Jungers part to take the high but more risky and difficult road.

Of course the book is about the storm, and not just the Andrea Gail. Probably the most riveting part of the book concerns the Air National Guard helicopter that forced landed in 100 foot seas. The details of this are well documented and Junger is thus able to sustain a strong narrative without falling back on tangents, or "analogy," as he does in the Andrea Gai story - which happens to make up four-fifths of the book. Thus some of the most popular complaints by readers is that it doesn't flow well and has awkward anecdotal tangents breaking up the storyline. However for anyone with a natural curiosity with how things work (fishing, boats, rescue), this type of braided narrative - common in creative non-fiction these days - is perfectly normal.

Overall I'm impressed with the books integrity and compassion. The writing is workman-like, dense like a magazine article but not stylistically original, except for the effective use of journalistic analogy to tell a story.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Breath-taking
Comment: Junger recounts the relentless ferocity of the Storm of the Century that hit North America's eastern seaboard during 1991. This is a breath-taking, riveting tale of human courage in the face of the most devastating forces of nature.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Unsentimental Inexorable Factual
Comment: The book ably reconstructs the terrifying facts, feelings and tragedy of the fishing boat Andrea Gail and her six-man crew, which disappeared during a killing storm of mythic proportions. Tragically, the bodies were never found, so nobody survived to tell the story. The book weaves a compelling patchwork around the sinking itself--the ship's colourful crew, their manic drives, lives and backgrounds. There are fascinating details of meterology, navigation and commercial fishing. We peer into the physics of rogue waves, the horrifying physiology of drowning, the agonies of search and rescue. We feel the adrenal charge of risk-fishing, the frailty of humans pitted against Nature, the lash of wind, the brine, the towering waves, the violent pitch and toss of the sea, told with the crackling force and energy of a first novel. The writing is tight, plain, elegant and restrained. Junger is ever the journalist, always tethered to his materials, never sensational, never indulging himself, or setting free the novelist. Perhaps his stern, disciplined self-control is his greatest triumph. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would gladly read it again.

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