Read on audio via Hoopla. Audio narrator is good.

The publisher tried to promote this by comparing it to [b:H is for Hawk|18803640|H is for Hawk|Helen Macdonald|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1442151714l/18803640._SY75_.jpg|26732095] and...no. H is for Hawk had top notch writing, a powerful emotional punch, and confidently woven narrative. Maybe it's lost in translation? Or a cultural difference? But I found the anecdotes about the author eel fishing with his father lacked an emotional connection and were kind of boring. The philosophical meanderings were poorly tied in and amateurish and felt like a student essay padded with too many words to reach a page count. The eel facts were the best part, I wish this had been purely scientific. I really enjoyed the journey along the history of eel research, including Aristotle and Freud. But overall the book just didn't hold its own. I'll leave the metaphysics of eels to others.

Tämä oli kyllä kaiken hehkutuksen ansainnut. Svensson kirjoittaa vetävästi aivan kummallisesta teemasta, joka vain imaisee mukaansa. Tämä on sujuva sekoitus omaelämäkertaa, tiedejournalismia ja tieteen historiaa. Ainoa, mikä kaduttaa on, että alkuperäisellä Ruotsilla tämä olisi ollut varmaan vielä parempi--vaikka asiallinen käännös olikin.

Didn't relate to the author or his analogies of the life cycle of the eel. However was very saddened about the critical endangered status of the European Eel and that very little seems to be being done to save it.

"I've just read an utterly fantastic book about eels," is a sentence I never thought I'd write.

The European eel, Anguilla anguilla, is one of the strangest creatures nature ever created. Remarkably little is known about the eel, even today. What we do know is that it's born as a tiny willow-leaf shaped larva in the Sargasso Sea, travels on the ocean currents toward the coasts of Europe - a journey of about four thousand miles that takes at least two years. Upon arrival, it transforms itself into a glass eel and then into a yellow eel before it wanders up into fresh water. It lives a solitary life, hiding from both light and science, for ten, twenty, fifty years, before migrating back to the sea in the autumn, morphing into a silver eel and swimming all the way back to the Sargasso Sea, where it breeds and dies.

And yet . . . There is still so much we don't know about eels. No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one can give a complete account of the eel's metamorphoses or say why they are born and die in the Sargasso Sea; no human has even seen a mature eel in the Sargasso Sea. Ever. And now the eel is disappearing, and we don't know exactly why.

What we do know is that eels and their mysterious lives captivate us.

This is the basis for ​The Gospel of the Eels, Patrik Svensson's quite unique natural science memoir; his ongoing fascination with this secretive fish, but also the equally perplexing and often murky relationship he shared with his father, whose only passion in life was fishing for this obscure creature

This was such a great book. For one, I learned more about eels than I ever thought I would and I never realized how fascinating a fish they are and the thousands of years of history behind its science, dating back to Aristotle. And two, how the author weaves philosophical arguments and points through his and his father’s love of eels. It’s such an unexpected book. It’s difficult to put down. And this is his first book! Highly recommend it!

Great read, a mix of the history of the study & natural history of eels with the author’s eel fishing with his father. The list of folk who studied eels runs from Aristotle through Freud to Racel Carson. Includes a bit of recent Swedish social history, the mystery & plight of the species. loved this.