Sarah's Reviews > The Old Man and the Sea

I've heard many things about this story. I've heard it's difficult, that it's tedious, that it describes every variety of fish in the sea... Okay, it does that last part a bit but it works within the story. What I did not expect was the meditative quality that was caused by his random thinking, like wondering about DiMaggio's bone spur in his heel. I used the audio narrated by Donald Sutherland. He didn't do voices, but that was only a problem for a very small portion of the book.

The majority of the book is this old man who makes his living by fishing but he hasn't caught anything for 84 days. On day 85 he goes out and he follows some birds to an area where there are fish. He eventually hooks an absolutely gigantic marlin, which spends a little over 48 hours towing him around. This is the majority of the book. Sounds boring, doesn't it? I was so engrossed that I ran a stop sign :) Oops. I thought of many alternate titles to the book: The Old Man vs the Fish, The Old Man vs the Sea, then I stopped being a smart ass because I started to realize that this particular old man had a bond with the sea and a fierce love and respect for both the sea and the fish. There are also some pretty intense scenes involving sharks. Sutherland did a wonderful job of bringing the man's thoughts to life but I really don't think the audio is necessary because the power is really in the words. This is a really beautiful story.