Spartina
Winner of the American Book prize, John Casey’s novel follows a fisherman attempting to finish a monumentally crafted backyard boat while maintaining a decking job, a family, a love affair. Spartina is the salt marsh grass that grows on the border between the land, the stream and the sea. It is both the name of the new boat and the metaphor of the fisherman’s life on the margins. In his dust jacket comment, George Garrett says that the novel, "... has, in abundance, all the virtues of our finest fiction – a superbly realized sense of place, an impeccable eye for detail and the rhythm and textures of dailiness, unforgettable characters who are fine-tuned for surprises and contradictions, events, acutely rendered, which matter, and a large pattern, alive with possibilities. Spartina is a major work by a major novelist."
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