My book club recently picked “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” because it seemed a more uplifting, lighter story than the dark, heavy reads we usually get to. And it turned out to fill that niche quite nicely. It’s a satirical, different kind of novel that builds on the theme that having faith in the impossible can be quite a good thing.
Written in the form of emails, letters, reports and diary entries, the novel is about a British fisheries scientist (Dr. Alfred Jones) who is called upon to somehow introduce salmon and fly-fishing into the country of Yemen. It’s all part of a dream of a visionary sheikh who loves fishing and believes it will have a beneficial effect on his country. The British prime minister’s office latches on to the idea as well, in its search for a positive, feel-good story about the U.K. coming out of the Middle East instead of war.
Yet to Alfred the idea is totally absurd as salmon aren’t suited to the Yemen’s desert conditions. Regardless he’s pressured into the project, coordinating it with help of the sheikh’s U.K. agent Harriet Chetwode-Talbot. The two make a dynamic team (one nerdy, the other sharp and elegant) along with the sheikh who inspires them to reach beyond what seems possible to reach their goal. Along the way they face various obstacles, including self-serving bosses and politicians, who are spoofed in the book as pompous asses, as well as Dr. Jones’s unhelpful, unloving wife who provides no encouragement and takes off to another country for work.
Will the project succeed? Will Harriet get together with Alfred? You won’t know until the very end. But the nice thing is it inspires you to believe in salmon in the Yemen, as it does Alfred, whose life is transformed by the project. In that way, it’s all quite uplifting. My only qualms with the whimsical book is that the narrative is a bit uneven with its various dispatches from different characters; some of which you want to read, others not so much. And the ending seemed perhaps as whimsical to believe as its salmon-in-the-desert premise, continuing its fairy tale-like quality.
Regardless I’m looking forward to it being released as a movie on March 9 with Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt. I suspect it will be a bit different than the book version, with more comedy, romance and perhaps a brighter ending.
