★ 04/11/2022
Writer and singer Tallack (Sixty Degrees North ) dives into his decades of fly-fishing in this incandescent work about the restorative power of nature. “For me, the desire to catch fish is the opposite of simple,” Tallack writes, “and at its root is not an eagerness to kill or to capture at all... a quite different instinct: an intense, focused curiosity.” Employing that intense curiosity here, he blends his personal history with a cultural investigation of fly-fishing, and, more specifically, its ability to lure people in. As he wades from 1980s East Sussex, where his “fixation” with fishing began, to the trout-filled waters he fished until his thirties in Shetland, he offers philosophical musings on the “flow state” induced by angling—a “combination of repetitive, purposeful movement... and a focused, optimistic mindset” that’s been known to reduce depression—and reminisces in lyrical prose on his many voyages, including trips to the River Devon’s “rushing waterfalls and... wide, languorous stretches.” Later chapters evoke the ambient threat of climate change and industrial pollution, noting, among other things, how Britain’s once-fecund chalk streams are being “choked life” due to massive amounts of untreated sewage discharged from local water companies. Never didactic or sentimental, his prose winds its way through inner and outer terrains, rendering sparkling meditations at every turn. This casts the life aquatic in a wondrous light. (July)
Tallack has a gift to draw the reader into his experiences as though one were to relive the adventures with him.
A masterfully told fisherman’s tale, which gets closer than most to grasping that slippery thing beyond the fish itself: the reason we are drawn to water, and what fishing can teach us.
"Patient, generous, ever attentive, Illuminated by Water is about both mastery and loving a thing enough to be inexpert at it for a very long time. It unspools over cultural and personal history to turn over facet after facet of what being on the water may reveal. We witness a ranging mind pull us far afield—only to remind us how many marvels are breathtakingly at hand.
"Illuminated by Water is a lyrical meditation on angling's allure whose real quarry is the discovery of meaning. Tallack's spellbinding descriptions of waters near and far resonate with moments of immersive, beautiful stillness, and in doing so make the case for fishing as a practice of engagement with the wild and hidden world, a way of being fully present in the moment, seeking answers to questions that lie beneath the surface.
A memoir with a difference, beautifully evocative, suffused with the calm of many days spent fishing and thinking in tranquility. The perfect gift for anglers everywhere.
A love letter to still, dark lochs and sparkling trout rivers; an account of a fascination and that deep-down draw we feel towards the water’s edge. Tallack’s beautiful book is full of interest, passion, and rich, buttery description. Wade into it, and let it flow through you.”
Tallack's stylish and sensitive writing captures all the dimensions of our wonderful fishing obsession in a way that reminds me of Nick Lyons and Norman Maclean at their best—those angler/writer masters whose ranks he now joins. Illuminated by Water deserves a spot on the very top shelf of all the fishing in print.”
Tallack has a gift to draw the reader into his experiences as though one were to relive the adventures with him.
The Wading List https://www.thewadinglist.com/malachy-tallack-illuminated-by-water/
"Like the best anglers, Malachy Tallack is always wondering what's over the next hill or around the next bend in the river. It hardly matters whether it's a brown trout of six inches or six pounds, a fat carp or a silvery salmon, it's the curiosity, the mystery that pulls him along. And we're glad to take the journey with him. Illuminated by Water belongs on the shelf with W. D. Wetherell's Vermont River and Luke Jennings' Blood Knots ."
It is a brave book—and a beautiful book.
Malachy Tallack writes as deftly as he casts a fly. This book is illuminated by water, but also by philosophy, experience and a profound sympathy for the natural world. A delight.”
Examines the significance of place and what it means to belong. This is a book about belonging. Tallack is one of a burgeoning group of young travel writers who have reinvigorated the genre with elements of psychogeography: the study of how places make us feel.
Praise for Illuminated by Water:
The book's real power comes from Tallack's poet’s eye.
The New York Times Book Review
A beautiful book. The book’s language is exquisite [and] perfectly matched to its subject. The tone is friendly and inviting, if not cordial, and of course it has the quality that can’t be faked. It is knowledgeable. It is not about fishing so much as the wonder of what it is like to be human, and as such, Illuminated By Water is profound and a delight.”
A masterful testament of what it means to be a modern angler. Tallack takes you on a journey, sometimes over moors of heather and lonely trout-filled lochs, other times along urbanized canals to hunt for pike. Along the way, he draws you into his world with haunting prose steeped in time spent on waters and love of sport.”
A subtle, thoughtful study of life on the sixtieth parallel. Highly enjoyable.
Lovely and evocative. A meditation on community, on humans’ relationship to the land, on what it means to belong to a place, on what makes a place truly a home.
A new kind of travel writing that emphasizes and explores the relationship between people and place.
Throughout his travels, Tallack beautifully sketches a sort of emotional geography of place, a yearning to connect with communities and landscapes.
"Going back to Walton’s The Compleat Angler, trout fishing has been the focus of a remarkable number of excellent books, but there are a special few, such as Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and Tom McGuane’s The Longest Silence, whose language is instilled with a beauty that fully befits the beauty of its subject. Malachy Tallack is such a writer, and llluminated by Water is destined to be a classic, both as a memoir on trout fishing and, also, a meditation on life."
A remarkable survey of cultures, climates and histories. [Tallack’s] writing is thoughtfully composed, beautiful and often surprising. An extended meditation on longing and belonging, on personal ties to place and on the particular nature of a certain band of earth and sea.
"Going back to Walton’s The Compleat Angler, trout fishing has been the focus of a remarkable number of excellent books, but there are a special few, such as Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and Tom McGuane’s The Longest Silence, whose language is instilled with a beauty that fully befits the beauty of its subject. Malachy Tallack is such a writer, and llluminated by Water is destined to be a classic, both as a memoir on trout fishing and, also, a meditation on life."
2022-03-15
Even for those who have never picked up a fishing rod, this poetic book has a lot to say about the process of finding the things that are truly important. Tallack, a Glasgow-based writer and musician, has been an enthusiastic angler since childhood. The author alternates between his ruminations about fishing and his experiences of visiting streams and lakes around the world, from Scotland to Canada to New Zealand. He provides a history of fly-tying and the ethics of fishing, and he recounts his hopes that angling will eventually become less Anglo-Saxon and less male. The quiet joy of it, he writes, should be open to everyone. Tallack’s particular interest is trout, but he is willing to pursue salmon and carp if the need arises. These days, the author is more likely to catch and release his quarry rather than kill and eat it. Many fishing clubs encourage this approach to ensure stocks remain healthy, and a few demand it. Because most of the fish caught by recreational anglers won’t be eaten, some may wonder why the sport is so important to those who participate. Of course, many of the best fishing spots are in places of great natural beauty, and there is a sense of getting back to a primal, uncluttered sensibility. But that is not the whole story, notes Tallack. It is not just about the scenery or patiently waiting for a bite. Paraphrasing art critic—and fisherman—Robert Hughes, Tallack writes that “pleasure [is] to be found not only in the achievement of something, but in the expectation of it….Submitting to a timescale…that is not your own, can free you from the need for patience altogether.” The author explains all this in lucid, unhurried prose, and he can turn a good phrase.
An engaging book that will make many readers head for the nearest stream to toss in a line.
