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Dec 26, 2016wyenotgo rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Right from the first sentence you know that you're going to encounter sailors' yarns, the kind of thing that might have been told by some of those fishermen in Jan de Hartog's "The Lost Sea". So, is this just one big novel or a collection of stories? Well, there is a meandering thread connecting personalities and events spanning close to a hundred years. It's also the story of a town and how its fate is changed by world events and decisions made by some of its people over that span of time. This a large book, 675 pages and each of its four sections could almost stand their own as separate books of more digestible size. But having begun his tale with such an outrageous sentence and the couple of paragraphs that follow, most reader would likely want Jensen to tell us what eventually happened to Laurids Madsen's boots! Jensen's portrayal of life in a seafaring community in mid-19th century, especially the life of boys growing up there is uncompromisingly grim and brutal. But there are moments of humor and the book is rich in historical detail. It's populated by an array of unique characters. And some of those tall tales are real winners!