The Book of Eels

Gastronomy, natural and social history, anecdotal autobiography, wit and a good measure of obsession blend pungently in this peculiar book. Tom Fort has arranged a meaty platter in honour of the not-so-humble eel: its life cycle, taste, place in myth, religion and folklore, and, simply, its slippery, mutative bizarreness, which should satisfy the literary epicure as well as the gastronomic. We discover, for example, that a student Sigmund Freud published a paper on the inconclusive structure of eel genitalia, in which he had (forlornly) hoped to isolate the eelish testicle: 'After the riddle of the eel's gonads,' Fort opines, 'the exploration of the human psyche and the identification of the castration complex must have seemed comparatively straightforward.' The alignment of all things eel-like with everything from art to breakfast gives this book an irresistible sideways air of gentle impishness; major historical players and ancient empires appear onstage cast in their relation to the little tubular fish that populates pies and pantheons alike. Eel cults and cutlets rub shoulders with a detailed and complex history of the uncertain science of eel biology; the heroic journey of the schooling elver from the depths of the Sargasso Sea to inland waters is told in cleanly measured language, with a proper respect and infectious wonder. Anyone with ambivalent feelings towards the beast that did away with Henry I (the infamous surfeit of lampreys was, in fact, probably composed of eels) may well find themselves converted; this book does for a wriggling bundle of hermaphroditic fish-flesh what Anna Pavord did for the tulip, and, frankly, it's lipsmackingly good. (Kirkus UK)