Candy's Raves (and Rants)

First, I’ve seen the movie so this may be a biased review. My biggest problem with the movie is that it took so many liberties with what happened onboard the Andrea Gail, things that no one has any way of knowing. I always felt cheated and that it was “dramatized” for our entertainment, kind of a thing.

I picked up the book because I did enjoy the story. I do remember the storm, although just barely, it was pretty big weather news. I like that the author’s note in the front explains why he writes it in the manner he does. He does explain that they just don’t know. But he does say that he took liberties and why he took them. Even then, the book is so much better than the movie. It goes into detail about the fishing industry, the evolution of the industry as well as how it is done.

It also goes into detail about the storms, how the boats are built to survive the storms and what the downfalls are of those that go down. The story is pretty gripping. He did a good job of making the characters seem real (they were real, after all!). I will say that some of the explanations really went over my head and I had to re-read more pages than I care to admit to understand it.

Overall, worth a read… I always enjoy hearing about “nature’s fury” so this was interesting to me!

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FROM THE PUBLISHER
It was the storm of the century—a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it “the perfect storm.”

When it struck in October, 1991, there was virtually no warning. “She’s comin’ on, boys, and she’s comin’ on strong,” radioed Captain Billy Tyne of the Andrea Gail from off the coast of Nova Scotia. Soon afterward, the boat and its crew of six disappeared without a trace.

The Perfect Storm is a real-life thriller, a stark and compelling journey into the dark heart of nature that leaves listeners with a breathless sense of what it feels like to be caught, helpless, in the grip of a force beyond understanding or control.