Linda Greenlaw

In this memoir, fishing boat captain Linda Greenlaw writes about a typical 30-day fishing trip from her boat’s base in Gloucester, Massachusetts, to the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland. Linda and her five-man crew deal with the weather, competition from other fishing boats who all want to find the best piece of water to fish, and interpersonal conflict among the crew. Greenlaw intersperses stories from her past experience into the text. Greenlaw provided just enough detail without show more overexplaining for readers like me without any knowledge or experience of sailing and fishing.

If you’ve read Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, you’ve met Linda Greenlaw before. Linda’s boat, the Hannah Boden, was fishing several hundred miles east of the Andrea Gail when she went down in that terrible storm. Greenlaw was the last person to have radio contact with the Andrea Gail’s captain, and the two boats were owned by the same man.

Greenlaw shares that she got into commercial fishing to pay her way through college, and she didn’t start with the intention of making a career of fishing. She found she enjoyed it. Her college education (English major) wasn’t wasted since she has developed a second career as an author. One of the most appealing aspects of this book is reading about a woman close to my own age whose life experience is so different from mine. This is the first of several memoirs, and I’m interested enough in Greenlaw’s story to keep reading. show less

Having read all of Linda Greenlaw's other books and enjoyed them a good deal, I ordered Recipes from a Very Small Island to complete the set! Well, not really...at least not totally. But I though "it's just a cook book".

So you might be able to imagine my delight when this book arrived and I started to look through it. First of all, the book is just lovely to look at. The photographs of the food by Joseph Deleo and of Isle au Haut, Linda and her parents by Sara Gray are beautiful.

Second, show more while I admit I have not tested any of the recipes yet, since it just arrived, they look very promising. Many are classics you might expect from a cookbook from 'a very small Maine island' like blueberry pie, chicken pie with herb biscuits, maple flavored baked beans and her mom Martha's famous lobster casserole.
But then there are a number of interesting sounding surprises...crab madeleines, braised lamb shanks with dried apricots, grilled salmon with blueberry corn salsa....beef stifado..
Actually, there is not a recipe in this book that does not sound interesting and worth trying.

Another very nice part of the book is that each recipe is preceded by a brief introduction from either Linda or her mother Martha. Sometimes, it is just a few lines and sometimes it is an amusing little story about some incident with the dish in the past. Every one enhances the recipe that follows.

If you are a fan of Ms. Greenlaw's other books, especially The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island, I think you will find the ten or so short essays throughout the book, filled with Ms. Greenlaw's ever present dry humor, a lovely addition. The subjects range from "The Beginner's Guide to Clambakes or How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Lobster" to an introduction to "The Pie Lady". Delightful....lol

I am sure this will be a treasured book in my library, not just for the food but for another of Ms. Greenlaw's charming views into life and family on a very small island on the beautiful coast of Maine. show less

I wish I liked the Linda Greenlaw portrayed here more than ended up liking her. The book is fair, but I don't fault her for that. At the time she wrote this, she was simply not a writer. And for someone who hasn't written much, this book is clear, practical, straightforward, unromantic (except for certain awkward moments, where such romanticism seemed forced). I admire her attitude and her toughness as a person, but I simply did not like this book, despite being a fiend for all literature show more nautical in nature. First, I simply could not get over the fact that her response to a seething, ugly racist on her crew was silence. Not just once, but several times. He verbally attacked a black man who was also on the crew--and who, it appears by the end of the book, is the most able crewman aboard. He calls him a nigger and a "porch monkey" and Linda has very little to say about this. She takes great care to let us know this young racist is a good kid and a good crewman. He'll settle down once we're fishing, she tells the reader. Huh? Just as I reluctantly buy into this, he makes a noose right in front of her and muses about lynching his fellow crewman. Again, there is no response. I was aghast. She's the captain. She has no problem later in the book ripping another crewman a new one because he mentioned over radio the fact that the boat had had a fantastic day of fishing (she didn't want other captain's to overhear the transmission and then try to encroach on her berth). In fact, she rips him, acidly, for a full day. However, she has nothing to say to Carl, who calls a fellow crewman a porch monkey, a nigger, and who mentions in her presence that he'd like to "lynch" him? Because she spends so much time talking about crew morale, about how important their states of collective mind are, I don't see any compelling reason why she handled this the way she did. And I found it very hard to get back on track after reading those scenes. No, a commercial boat is not going to be the f-ing Rainbow Coalition. Linda's silence in the fact of this crap was bad enough, but when she tried then to tell the reader that this young man was one of the best crewmen she'd ever worked with, I was done here.

Of course, I finished the book (I always do) and found some interesting parts to distract me from this. But then we get to the part where a swordfish is stabbed, tied to the stern, and lit on fire, just to "change our luck." (Disturbingly, the very few negative reviews of this book I've read on Goodreads have only mentioned reviewers' disgust with the swordfish scene, not a peep about the creepy way Greenlaw ignored the vile attacks on her best crewman).

Again, I fully realize that the sea is not romantic, not to a commercial fisherman. It's the most difficult, dangerous job for a reason, and there is no luxury aboard of being able to examine your philosophies when you're in the midst of it. However, there was plenty of time for reflection by the time Greenlaw wrote this. To her credit, she included the ugliness of Carl's treatment of Peter, but she did not address it. It seemed to be included only to add color.

Gah. I hate that I don't like this book, because two authors I admire immensely--Sebastian Junger and Douglas Whynott--both praised this account. Sigh. This has been the summer of Hating Books Everyone Else Loves. show less

Greenlaw’s first memoir described a typical 30-day swordfishing trip on the 6-person boat that she captained. Several years later, Greenlaw has returned to her native Isle au Haut, Maine and exchanged swordfishing for lobster fishing. Her second memoir describes a season of setting and hauling in traps with her father on her boat, the Mattie Belle. Greenlaw doesn’t seem to find lobster fishing as fulfilling as swordfishing, and she’s more interested in telling stories about the show more island’s history, her extended family, and other island residents (both year-round and summer), resulting in a disjointed narrative. Greenlaw’s irritability made it hard to empathize with her, and I almost stopped reading when she revealed her antipathy toward dogs. show less