[Book Review] The Old Man and the Sea

It took me ten days to complete this book although it's a short novel of about less than 100 pages only. To let you know that I read the last 40 ish pages on a single day (I read the book everyday) sums up the pace of the book :D For some of you who are unaware of the reason for me to pick this book - this book has won the Nobel Prize in the Literature work category. I must tell you I was really scared when I picked this book from my friend who borrowed it at the Cognizant Siruseri SEZ library!

Before you read the review, I'd like to confirm that I did enjoy reading this novel. But, I missed a lot because a lot of terms were unfamiliar to me - that is related to the fishing. If someone told me that I should have taken a Fishing 101 before reading this novel, I sure would have loved this! But, I just can't keep on googling for a lot of fishing terms were used in this novel. At one point, I stopped looking and with the flow, I could still enjoy the novel. So, if you'd like to really enjoy this, please lookup for the fishing terms like:

Harpoons
Skiff
Mast
Sardines etc. I don't remember most of the other technical terms.

As you have guess it correctly this book is about an old man and the sea. Protagonist is an old and experienced fisherman, Santiago his name. With age, his luck has also ran out as from the beginning of the novel, he'd been to the sea for 84 days and hadn't caught a single fish. Manolin, "the boy" is a good friend of him and used to go with the old man a few times for fishing until his parents decided to send him with different people considering the luck of Santiago. The novel takes us with him to his 85th day into the sea, alone, with him feeling luck on his side.

When my friend and I went to the Siruseri SEZ library, I picked "Carry on, Jeeves" and he "The Old man and the Sea" (He later told me that the reason from him to chose this was because the book was small and had less pages). He couldn't even read more than ten pages in the book as he felt unbelievably sleepy and was ready to return it then and there. I told him to give the book to me so that I could give it a try. I'm telling this to you because, this book is not for everyone. This is for those who have that patience.

Sure, I felt sleepy too on the first few pages, but once Santiago leaves for fishing on the 85th day, I felt as if I was travelling along with that old man. Before this "literature" book, the one other book that I read that fall under the same category is a Tamil book named "Thanneer". Now, I don't know the genre "Literature" nor I was interested in one before "Thanneer". I liked that book very much because, it was, as if, happening somewhere in Tamil Nadu for sure. I still haven't looked up at the Literature genre in google as to what it is, but from my understanding after reading these two books - to write something to be as classified as a literature, one should have a deep, deep knowledge of it. In the case of this book, it's the old man Santiago and the sea itself whereas in that Tamil book it's the water and humanity.

I'd like to think that the same thing that happens to this old man in this novel should be a thing with the fishermen. Because, when I read "Thanneer" (translates to "Water") I know the background - the scarcity of water in Chennai during the time of the novel. Just how I felt the "Water", and characters "Jamuna and Chaya" in the "Thanner" novel, I feel the "Sea", and characters "Santiago and Manolin" in this novel. The novel's ending left a definite impact on me and I sure hope it'll leave the same to you too. Highly recommended, if you are ofcourse, a patient reader :)

PS: There's even a movie with the same name released on 1958. I'm gonna watch it soon :)