Posted on July 08 2008
I just finished reading Michael Dahlie’s new debut novel about a guileless New York fly fisher who is hamstrung by his inability to see around the corner at the things life is throwing his way. It’s a very relaxing read — perfect beach reading and a nice change of pace for those of us tired of reading how we’re doing everything wrong when it comes to fly selection and arm motion.
Janet Maslin reviews A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living (W. W. Norton & Company, 281 pages) in The New York Times this morning, describing it as a fine first first start for an author who seems to have just stepped out of a New Yorker cartoon: “Michael Dahlie’s fictitious Maidenhead Grange is a beloved Catskills fly-fishing lodge that is home to the Hanover Street Fly Casters, an exclusive group founded by 12 Manhattan financiers in 1878. The group named the lodge during a fit of boozy Anglophilia. Membership is hereditary. And each man’s room is strictly his own, filled with a lifetime’s worth of irreplaceable mementos.”
A Gentleman’s Guide to Graceful Living: A Novel