As a child in the 1960s, Luke Jennings was fascinated by the rivers and lakes around his Sussex home. Beneath their surfaces, it seemed to him, waited alien and mysterious worlds. With library books as his guide, he applied himself to the task of learning to fish.
His progress was slow, and for years he caught nothing. But then a series of teachers presented themselves, including an inspirational young intelligence officer, from whom he learnt stealth, deception and the art of the dry fly. So began an enlightening but often dark-shadowed journey of discovery. It would lead to bright streams and wild country, but would end with his mentor's capture, torture and execution by the IRA.
Blood Knots is about angling, about great fish caught and lost, but it is also about friendship, honour and coming of age. As an adult Jennings has sought out lost and secretive waterways, probing waters 'as deep as England' at dead of night in search of giant pike. The quest, as always, is for more than the living quarry. For only by searching far beneath the surface, Jennings suggests in this most moving and thought-provoking of memoirs, can you connect with your own deep history.
'A beautifully-crafted story... I was transfixed... completely absorbed by Jenning's stilled, naturalist's eye as he waited by dark canals and chuckling chalk streams for that flash of beauty, while on that other plane, above the water, the ugly chaos of life waited to resume its infernal narrative.' Nicholas Crane
Author
About Luke Jennings
Luke Jennings is the author of three novels, including the Booker Prize-longlisted Atlantic. As a journalist he has written for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Time, as well as all the British quality papers, and he is currently the dance critic of the Observer. He is married with three children, lives in North London, and fishes whenever he can.
