Two books about eels

Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World's Most Mysterious Fish 

James Prosek
The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

Patrik Svensson

I suppose if you are like most people, reading one book about eels would probably be enough; so between these two recent entries, which one to choose? Having now read them both, I can help. I praised James Prosek's wonderful book when it came out nearly a decade ago; it does a good job with the natural history of the eel itself, but it is especially good on the cultural and economic aspects as well. He knows about fish, he admires the eel, and he admires the people who admire and depend upon the eel.

Patrik Svensson's much-hyped recent addition to the eel canon is, sadly, bad, though, mercifully, short. It commits what would have to be the cardinal sin in any a book about eels: rather little of it is actually about eels. Ostensibly, the book alternates chapters of memoir and eel-business. The memoir part involves Svensson eel fishing with his dad as a kid in Sweden. The depiction of father, son, and their relationship is not the stuff of Knausgård, I'm afraid. There is also some description of eel-fishing methods, which I found mildly interesting, but not much about the European eel itself, which remains, as Svensson reminds us repeatedly, mysterious. The eel chapters do provide an overview of eel natural history at a decent Wikipedia level– most notably, the eel's catadromous life cycle and migration, and the mystery at the center of eel existence: their reproduction, which presumably takes place in the vast Sargasso Sea but has never been observed.

Along with a little bit about eels, we learn that Sigmund Freud spent some time in college studying eel sexual biology. That is intriguing, but after noting this, Svensson moves on to a superficial overview of Freud's ideas, including the concept of the uncanny (unheimlich), which Svensson likes to think (without any supporting evidence whatsoever) may have been inspired by Freud's experience studying eels. I would at least have thought something Freudian could have been made of the eel's flaccidly phallic nature, but Svensson's biographical speculations don't go there.

There are other digressions, including a long one about Rachel Carson, who at least did write something significant about the eel in her first book; but most of what Svensson has to say about her is well known and not very enlightening when it comes to the eel.

I suppose I should add that Svensson's prose is pedestrian, but perhaps some blame lies with the translator.

To summarize: If you want to learn about the eel– or its place in human culture and society– Prosek's is the book for you.