The Darkest Depths of Grief —A Review of “The Fisherman” by John Langan
In a way, horror and grief go hand in hand. Out of all genres, it often feels the most able to grapple with the daunting task of capturing such an indescribably dark experience. Ghost stories are often stories about grief, and The Fisherman, although not a typical ghost story in many ways, is no different.
Water as a metaphor for grief is as old as the sayings that come with it (drowning in grief, an ocean of grief, and on and on). John Langan takes these adages and transforms them into something more. The Fisherman is at once a fanciful tale of black magic and folk horror (and extended fishing metaphors), and a deeply grim realistic portrayal of loss, and how fully you can lose yourself in its overwhelming depths.
In a way, loss of a loved one, especially prematurely, is a loss of such magnitude that it makes any idea of a heaven or “a better place” after death feel laughable, flimsy; any such meaning you can ascribe to such a loss is an empty platitude about as helpful as a drop of water is in putting out a forest fire. In the depths of such grief your life is hell, so much so that it’s hard to imagine there being anything else but hell, not only in this life, but any possible life afterwards. This is a concept that John Langan explores quite intimately in The Fisherman.
(A/N: Mild spoilers ahead)
The start of the novel introduces us to the protagonist Abe, who has lost his young wife to cancer, and along with her, his dream of a loving, peaceful future together, as well as any possibility of raising the children they had hoped to have with each other. In his grief he turns to fishing, one of the only things that keeps him from being fully swallowed into the throes of alcoholism and despair that often follow such loss.
By chance (or maybe by fate) he crosses paths with Dan. Dan is a casual coworker and acquaintance and nothing more, until the day that he loses his entire family — his wife and both his sons — in the blink of an eye after a nightmarish car accident that leaves only Dan alive.
All of this lends a visceral horror to the story, a very real one and personally familiar to too many, long before any fantastical elements are truly introduced into the novel.
Abe and Dan’s stories converge after this car accident, their shared grief and trauma drawing them together onto fishing trips, and eventually leading them both to Dutchman’s Creek — an infamous, mysterious creek that is far deeper than it seems, and is overshadowed by a dark, seemingly impossible tale of its true nature.
A good portion of the novel is devoted to the mythology around Dutchman’s Creek, a tale that occurs long before Abe and Dan and the events of part one of the novel.
It’s pertinent to mention that throughout The Fisherman, we are traversing our way through the beautiful Catskill Mountains and its various streams, gullies, and creeks. The portion regarding the history of Dutchman’s Creek is itself centred around the history of the Ashokan Reservoir. Weaving real history and locations with the darkly fantastical lends a richly intimate atmosphere to the novel that is easy to get lost in and very hard to shake.
In the same beat as lush descriptions of beautiful greenery and wilderness, we also meet haunting monsters that rear out of the pitch black depths of our worst nightmares. These barely-human forms with uncanny golden-black fish’s eyes conjure up in ancient tongues visions of an endless black ocean, within which an unimaginable cosmic horror waits.
The main antagonist, who is introduced in this historical part of the story, is a mysterious figure that may as well be a personification of grief itself. It adds to the growing idea that the true adversary at the heart of this novel isn’t any one character or monster, but loss.
A dark magician known only as The Guest for a good portion of the tale, he is someone so consumed by grief and trauma that his entire life has been devoted to waging a war against any and all natural forces just to conquer it, terrible consequences be damned. I’ll save the details for the actual reading of the book, but even in this character’s worst moments, you can’t help but feel an understanding — even a kind of sympathy — for his emotions and motivations. After all, anyone who has had to experience their loved ones unjustly ripped from life (never mind in such a brutal and violent way, we eventually learn), has likely felt the all consuming obsession that follows it.
Grief and loss saturates every corner of this novel, and just about every important point in the plot, from Abe and Dan’s story, to the historical tale that precedes it, permeates from the (often untimely) death of someone’s loved one. Each death is the true catalyst to the momentum of the plot, like ripples propagating out from a stone dropped into a still lake.
Near the end of the novel, although I was gripped with the usual feelings of suspense and fear that come with reading horror, I was mainly struck by a deep sense of sadness. There is a moment when Dan cried that his life is nothing now without his family, and that he would do anything to tell them that he loves them one more time. Again I felt that no matter how frightening all the elements of monsters and black magic and grotesque horrors are, the darkest part of the story lies in the very real experience of grief, beside which any fantastical monster pales in comparison.
I love cosmic horror and its power to explore human emotions or experiences that are near impossible to articulate otherwise. John Langan does a masterful job of weaving a novel that is difficult to unclench your white knuckles from once you’ve begun, and I would recommend The Fisherman to any Lovecraftian horror fan, or anyone who wants to read a beautifully written tale exploring the intricacies of trauma and grief.
