Blood Knots - Luke Jennings

[PondPikey]

Just finished reading this, really really enjoyed it. Its all about the dry fly and the relationship the author has with his teacher. A good read and something different - thoroughly recommended.

Description
As a child in the 1960s, Luke Jennings was fascinated by the rivers and lakes around his Sussex home. Beneath their surfaces, it seemed to him, waited alien and mysterious worlds. With library books as his guide, he applied himself to the task of learning to fish. His progress was slow, and for years he caught nothing. But then a series of teachers presented themselves, including an inspirational young intelligence officer, from whom he learnt stealth, deception and the art of the dry fly. So began an enlightening but often dark-shadowed journey of discovery. It would lead to bright streams and wild country, but would end with his mentor's capture, torture and execution by the IRA. Blood Knots is about angling, about great fish caught and lost, but it is also about friendship, honour and coming of age. As an adult Jennings has sought out lost and secretive waterways, probing waters 'as deep as England' at dead of night in search of giant pike. The quest, as always, is for more than the living quarry. For only by searching far beneath the surface, Jennings suggests in this most moving and thought-provoking of memoirs, can you connect with your own deep history.

[Alaudacorax]

I can remember a couple of occasions when I've come across glowing reviews for this and intended putting it in my Amazon wishlist, but somehow forgot. I get the impression it's something quite special among fishing books.

I've duly wishlisted it - thanks for the reminder, PondPikey. I'll look forward to reading it.

[GarryProcter]

It certainly is a very fine book - it was also serialized on BBC Radio 4 (last year, I think).

[The Tuesday Swim]

Excellent book, fine balance between growing up and references to angling, also a great story and characters.

Its a re-read book.

[Gary Bills]

A really controversial statement, - but I think that "Blood Knots" just might be the best fishing book ever written...It's not that Jennings is a great angler, - clearly he struggles with the best of us; - but he is surely a great writer, and a man with a soul. Some of the tales are almost too poignant to bear -, and I won't do a "spoiler" here and ruin the book for those lucky souls yet to read it.
I will say, however, that the pike fishing accounts, set in the dark urban landscape of London, will haunt me forever...and the idea that, when the line starts to tick off the spool, "this time, it might not be a fish at all..."
This man is the Proust of angling!

[Haydn Clarke]

A really controversial statement, - but I think that "Blood Knots" just might be the best fishing book ever written...

Not an outrageous claim by any means, Farley. I'm of a mind to agree as, ironically, there's probably been few angling books that appealed to non-angling readers (just read the Amazon reviews) as much as "Blood Knots" has. So, not only a great angling book but simply just a great book.

I personally think that "Blood Knots" raised the bar on angling writting.

[The VFC]

Whilst I loved the book's angling sections, I found it difficult as a lad who was raised in Belfast in the '70's to get away from Nairac's split reputation - to some he has almost folk hero like proportions, a man who crossed the divide in many ways, to others - like my father (who knew him) he was an arrogant fool who endangered not only himself but others around through his propensity to treat everything like a big game.

As I say - I found it hard to get rid of this nagging doubt as I read the book and so get the best from it.

Jim

[The Tuesday Swim]

Whilst I loved the book's angling sections, I found it difficult as a lad who was raised in Belfast in the '70's to get away from Nairac's split reputation - to some he has almost folk hero like proportions, a man who crossed the divide in many ways, to others - like my father (who knew him) he was an arrogant fool who endangered not only himself but others around through his propensity to treat everything like a big game.

As I say - I found it hard to get rid of this nagging doubt as I read the book and so get the best from it.

Jim

That's a very interesting comment Jim, and your father to call him an 'arrogant fool' probably explains Nairac's destiny.

[Tench Dreamer]

Whilst I loved the book's angling sections, I found it difficult as a lad who was raised in Belfast in the '70's to get away from Nairac's split reputation - to some he has almost folk hero like proportions, a man who crossed the divide in many ways, to others - like my father (who knew him) he was an arrogant fool who endangered not only himself but others around through his propensity to treat everything like a big game.

As I say - I found it hard to get rid of this nagging doubt as I read the book and so get the best from it.

Jim

I know where you are coming from here Jim.

I didnt grow up in Belfast in the 70s, but I know others that did. Nairic's story.Which has two ways of description is a book in its own right. The fact was thate had played such an integeral part in Mr Jennings journey, I suppose it was completely essential to the book.

So the books narrative takes us from some of the finest angling prose , and descriptions of fishing companions, right through the drama of the unwinding spool. Then onto the streets of Belfast , with emotions and the politics in the mid 1970s.

So quite alot really.

For sure a powerful book, fine angling writing too. But if Im honest I shared Jims doubt

[Gary Bills]

But Jennings doesn't gloss over Nairac's faults, does he? I don't think I would have liked Nairac one bit, - all considered, I knew a few people like him at university, - but we do understand the tragedy through Jennings' eyes, and through his wonderful prose, and I found that experience moving. I found the Rene Berg section even more moving, by the way, - an elegy for a far gentler soul...