Sacks, Adam – Salmon Doubts

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Salmon Doubts

Just in case some people out there don’t have a good idea of the general life of a salmon, let me give you the brief synopsis from the start of the book: salmon hatch in rivers, fatten on rich ocean food, return at maturity to spawn in their natural rivers and die shortly after spawning. In other words, what seems on the surface like a short, silly life, without much room for contemplation. Leaving aside the fact that they’re just fish, of course, this book is about the life of one particular school of salmon from birth to death. They hatch, form little social groups here and there, and basically go through their short lives, without much thought about what the other possibilities are. All of this is except for one salmon, who wonders what else is out there and why nobody else ever considers that. Anything other than that would ruin the story, in my opinion, but this story made me think more than most of the things I’ve read recently. I had a pretty clear idea going into this, that the school of fish was a bunch of followers and that their unexamined life was silly at best, and ended up with a new appreciation for the simple fact of being completely content with who you are and your lot and life. Screw it, I’m talking about the ending, so stop now if you don’t want to read it. Click on the title to go to the Amazon link for the graphic novel and help Jeff Mason out at Alternative Comics, OK? So at the end of the book, one of the salmon ends up going off on its own, but we don’t see what happens to it, or if it could possibly be as content and happy as the other fish. The other fish in the school, meanwhile, had sex and then died, completely at peace with their life and death. And did I mention that the use of a few colors in this makes this book a whole bunch better than it would have been otherwise? Like I said, it’s thought-provoking as hell, and not in the ways that I would have thought. It’s $14.95 and seriously, find a copy of this and read it!