Derek Hansen: Something Fishy

Answer me this: Are there none so boring as crusty old blokes telling fishy tales out of school? The one that got away? Do me a favour. There are story tellers, however, and then there are story tellers. Try Hemingway. He could rattle out a cracking fishing yarn, as could Zane Grey. Recently our own Kevin Ireland wrote a little gem called How To Catch a Fish. Steinbeck liked to bait up, too. Did he ever. He once said, apparently without batting an eyelid: "For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight."

Now along comes another enthusiastic man of words and worms, Derek Hansen. The ex-ad agency man who became a highly successful Australian novelist, was born in England and spent the 1950s growing up in Grey Lynn opposite Richmond Rd School. After classes he would catch a trolley bus and go fishing for tiddlers off the steps of the Ferry Building, a childhood memory he fondly squeezes into one of the 12 fictional short stories that go into Something Fishy.

Hemingway, it was once said, "fished because he loved to write about it". Clearly Hansen also finds writing about rods and reels a fun diversion, but happily for us he does not lose sight

of the fact that the folk on the other end of the line are more interesting than the fish themselves; wet, dull-eyed things that they are.

Here are just three of Hansen's wacky people stories in this

collection: A randy holidaymaker in Fiji succumbs to what the locals call the deadwillyfish; a luminary in genetics injects himself with the DNA of a great white shark to cure his brain tumour; and a snapper fisherman has a chance encounter with a German sub

off Great Barrier Island.

It gets better: an Australian couple harvest fresh-water fish in Indonesian rice paddies, an ichthyologist discovers a breed of giant turtle thought to be extinct; and an illiterate Mexican kid may or may not be smuggling marijuana.

Hansen finishes with a touch of nice irony. A fishing legend in a small North Island coastal town is convinced by his hippy wife that to keep taking snapper from the sea is against nature. No, I'm not going to tell you how it ends. Suffice to say it is a great read.

 

* Hedley Mortlock is an Auckland reviewer.

* Harpercollins, $26