Linda Greenlaw: The Lobster Chronicles: Life On A Very Small Island

Reviewed by PHILIPPA JAMIESON

After 17 years away on swordfishing boats in the North Atlantic (she had a part to play in Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm), Linda Greenlaw returns home to a tiny island off the Maine coast. She takes up lobster fishing, like most people on Isle a Haut, and also hopes to find a man, build a house and have children.

It's a big adjustment, being back on the island, living with her parents again and trying out new work. She loves her home, but gets despondent when she's hauling up empty lobster traps and wonders if she should be doing something else.

The book has all the ingredients of a moving, funny memoir, but a better writer would have really brought it alive. While the descriptions of lobster fishing may fascinate other fisherfolk, the facts, figures and reportage failed to reel me in.

There are chapters about the island's eccentrics, anecdotes like the time Greenlaw's grandmother had to be buried twice, personal reflections and even a lone imagined episode from the past, all rolled together in a somewhat disjointed whole.

Greenlaw openly expresses her desire to find a husband, but I question how serious she is. In the permanent population of around 70, the single males are two gay men and her cousin.

At times I laughed out loud. Most of the time, though, it doesn't live up to the promise of the cover blurb: "Something happens that forces Greenlaw to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about life, luck and lobsters." It's readable - has been a New York Times bestseller - and moderately interesting, but lacks that x-factor. It works best as an insider's observation of a remote community.

Schwartz $24.95

* Philippa Jamieson is a Dunedin freelance writer.