The Lobster Chronicles

May 6, 2002
Greenlaw (The Hungry Ocean), known to readers of The Perfect Storm
as the captain of the sister ship to the ill-fated Andrea Gail, gave up swordfishing to return to her parents' home on Isle Au Haut off the coast of Maine and fish for lobster. Her plainspoken essays paint a picture of a grueling life as she details maintaining her boat and her equipment, setting and hauling hundreds of traps with a crew of one (her father, a retired steel company executive), contending with the weather and surviving seasons when the lobsters don't bother to come around. She intersperses her narrative with plenty of eccentrics who live on her tiny island (there are 47 full-time residents, half of whom she's somehow related to). Among them are Rita, the inveterate borrower who's such a nuisance that Greenlaw's parents hide behind the couch when they see her coming; George and Tommy of Island Boy Repairs, who make a horrendous mess of every job they undertake; and Victor, the cigar-eating womanizer who imports a red-headed flasher from Alabama. One of Greenlaw's themes is her desire to find a husband but, according to her friend Alden, she intimidates men: she's tough talking, feisty and very self-assured, which is no doubt why the other lobstermen on the island readily accept her as one of them. Self-speculation and uncertainties such as these nicely balance her delightfully cocky essays of island life. (July)Forecast:Greenlaw's previous book appeared on many bestseller lists. While this title may lack the thrill and
Perfect Storm
–mystique of her previous book, expect strong sales, which will be boosted by an appearance on the
Today
show.

June 1, 2002
Greenlaw's first book, "The Hungry Ocean" (1999), was a best-selling account of a grueling, month-long swordfishing trip on the sister ship of the tragic "Andrea Gail," of "The Perfect Storm "fame. "The Lobster Chronicles" finds her still fishing, but in a different place, at a different pace, and in pursuit of a different quarry. And rather than another treatise on commercial fishing, Greenlaw's newest is a flotsam-and-jetsam commentary on life. Her decision to give up being captain of a larger vessel for a return home to the small Maine island where her family has lived for generations leads her to pursue a more personal and independent style of making a living. The labor of maintaining the boat and hundreds of lobster pots is taxing, but she sets her hours and goals, and so has time for local lighthouse politics and interplay with family and other odd characters. All is not perfect, as the lobster season is poor and her mother becomes ill, but Greenlaw, as comfortable on the page as she is on the ocean, once again proves to be both enlightening and highly entertaining. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)