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Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (CD) (Unabridged) | 
 enlarge | Author: Paul Torday
Creators: John Sessions, Samantha Bond, Fenella Woolgar
Publisher: Orion
Category: Book
List Price: £21.99
Buy New: £14.11
You Save: £7.88 (36%)
New (9) from £13.77
Avg. Customer Rating:  65 reviews
Format: Audiobook, Cd
Media: Audio CD
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 5.3 x 5.2 x 1
ISBN: 0752888692
EAN: 9780752888699
ASIN: 0752888692
Publication Date: February 1, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 60 more reviews...
 What a pleasant surprise! August 9, 2008
I'd seen this book in the shops and hadn't taken too much notice of it as the title rather put me off. I'm not particularly interested in fishing (well - not at all, really) and the Yemen sounded rather distant and obscure. However, a friend recommended it to me and lent me his copy. I put it on my pile of "books to read" (which is rapidly approaching the ceiling) where it remained for a while. I'd finished reading my last book and grabbed this one off the pile before rushing off to work one morning and how glad I am that I did! I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's witty, unusual, interesting, informative and has a clever and unexpected ending. I found the style of writing interesting, being a mixture of emails, reports, narrative, and correspondence, despite which it was not in the least bit confusing. Also, the rather terse (on one side, at least) correspondence between our hero (if that's what we can call him) and his wife brought a smile to my face as it possibly reflected some married couples' relationships all too well! I now know quite a bit about salmon, their habitat and their breeding habits that I didn't before reading this, which information was imparted totally painlessly and didn't detract from the plot. I'm so pleased that my friend persuaded me to read this book and I shall certainly recommend it to others. It was very different from anything I've read before. Do give it go!
Delightful Yarn June 17, 2008
A satirical, humorous fishy tale, flavoured with the double-speak of the British civil service, politicans, an empty marriage, the different faces of love, faith, hope, and incompetent Yemini Jihadis. Much to his dismay, Fisheries Scientist Dr. Alfred Jones is ordered to do the impossible, which is to populate the Wadi Aleyne in the highlands of the Yemen with wild salmon. His wife Mary, a successfull international banker, with a mind like a Microsoft Excell spread sheet, is certain the project will fail. Fred also thinks it's a hair brained scheme, until meeting Ms Harriet Chetwode-Talbot. Harriet is the go-between for elderly, wise, Yemeni Sheikh Muhammad, a mystical salmon fisherman with an Estate in the highlands of Scotland. The salmon project, becomes the most defining period of his life for scientific humanist Fred. Who records his deepest longings, along with the projects progress, in his diary.
I would have given this delightful novel five stars, had it not been for the combined use of interviews,newspaper reports, and Hansard. That approach could be somewhat irksome. Praise to the author for an otherwise, rattling good yarn. I would recommend the book to friends.
 Good but labourous read June 12, 2008
I liked this book in the end but found it difficult to get fully into it due to the way in which Paul Torday decided to set the novel out. After the first 100-so pages I started to get fully into the book and did enjoy it to a certain extent.
The way characters are portrayed, bumbling well meaning Dr Jones, cynical Maxwell and the prophetic and highly intelligent sheikh, was very good and it helped the story along well. (I find that in books that are written in letter, email, report etc form that characterisation can often be pushed aside but Torday managed to prove this idea wrong for the better).
It was funny but it was also sad, I felt for Jones and Harriet towards the end of the novel (although not for Mary Jones) and it was the way Torday made this happen that really wins my praise. Unfortunately the medium and the way that the story often dragged along was a disappointment.
3/5
Light but with darker undertones May 22, 2008
An easy to read, imaginative novel that keeps you hooked until the end. So refreshing to read something that is creative in literary style as well as in subject matter.
It is a novel not a work of science - and thankfully the scientific elements did not detract from the storyline - you do not need to like fish to enjoy this book!!
A tiddler, but fun to catch. April 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I was put off by the sound of this book: it seemed whimsical, and the device of telling the story through diaries, reports and emails sounded laboured. But I nonetheless picked it up at someone else's house and read the first few pages, and was sufficiently gripped to feel compelled to buy it.
Sadly the charm of the early chapters wears off quite rapidly; and the device of reports and diaries gets less and less convincing as the book goes on.
This is a charming tale of a humble fisheries scientist with a dried up marriage who finds himself in the deep unchartered waters of a scheme to introduce salmon fishing to the wadis of Yemen. The painfully didactic 'Reading Group Notes' that came as part of the edition I bought, will try to tell you this is a tale of two cultures - western anglo-protestant and middle-eastern Muslim. But that is to over-claim. This is a light, and mostly likeable, comedy about the fine meeting points between British eccentricity, British bureaucracy and a peculiarly Britsh hubris that comes with British ambition.
The central character, Fred, is lovable, and his hopeless marriage and equally hopeless crush on his work colleague are both engaging and convincing.
The pity is that the structure of the book is overambitious. The 'found documents' device proves unsustainable, and Torday is quickly writing standard fiction prose within the unconvincing wrappers of supposedly official documents and personal diary entries. No one ever wrote a diary in the style of a novel; and even less has any formal government report ever been written that way. Torday unnecessarily sets itself the task of writing in numerous pastiche styles - political memoir, newspaper report, public enquiry, ordinary diary, military correspondence, and so on - and yet cannot manage any of them convincingly. The irony is that what he can do perfectly well is write straightforward prose fiction.
So ultimately this is indeed all I feared - whimsical, with a flawed device at its centre - but it makes for a speedy, distinctive read. The kind of thing to pass the time on a river bank while waiting for something exciting to happen.
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