The Trout
A Novel
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
At the heart of every life there lies a secret.
Alex Smyth, of Irish birth but living for many years with his wife in rural Canada, receives a trout fly in the mail, with no message and no return address. It stirs a fear that he is being stalked after the publication of his most recent book, and it awakens in him deeply buried, inchoate memories from his childhood in Ireland, before he was old enough to understand the adult world around him. It also evokes the guilt that he may have murdered a man, a feeling so strong it changes him and threatens his marriage. Alex has no choice but to return alone to Ireland and his estranged father, to try and begin to solve the mystery.
A novel of great literary beauty structured as a tense psychological thriller, The Trout is a tale of predators and prey, deception, and the hidden crimes that can shape a life. Alex’s physician father loved to fish and imbued in him a deep knowledge of the sport. In brief passages, this fisherman’s lore periodically comes to the surface and resonates deeply with the dark mystery at the core of the novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Writer Alex Smyth, the narrator of this satisfying novel from Irish author Cunningham (Capital Sins), grew up in Ireland but has settled in rural Bayport, Ontario. One day he receives a letter postmarked in Toronto containing only a fishing lure, which stirs up unsettling childhood memories, some of which involve another boy, Terence Deasy. Alex thinks he "murdered someone" when he was seven, but he can't remember. As he tells his wife, Kay, "It's like there are big holes in my brain." He also feels uncomfortable that his first novel falsely eulogizes his elderly and estranged father, Dr. Patrick Smyth. Leaving Kay at home in Bayport, Alex returns to Ireland to seek answers from his father and to track down the key players from his childhood, including Terence. Cunningham artfully spins several stories at once: Kay, alone in Bayport with her doubts about their marriage and fears of a stalker; Alex seeing people and events from both a child's and an adult's perspective. Brief, cogent paragraphs about trout provide a connecting thread in this thoughtful, exquisitely told tale.
