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Title: Melville on Meth
Review: I bought Trawler because I had read O'Hanlon's previous books, Into the Heart of Borneo and No Mercy, and so thoroughly enjoyed them, I could hardly put them down. By contrast, Trawler was such a huge disappointment, I could hardly bear reading it until I finally put it down for good without finishing it. It's full of the kind of fishing and sailing detail of Moby Dick, but without Melville's nuance or complexity. Instead, we get an insignificant frenzy of unrelated "facts" that we might expect from someone in a drug-induced state, who imagines that each experience during that time is fraught with deep significance. It's perhaps telling that early on, O'Hanlon admits that "months after the contract was signed," he still owed his publisher a book. Trawler ought to serve as a reminder not to let term papers go unwritten until the night before they're due.
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