Sometimes Wolf eels and Giant pacific octopus will compete for the best den spaces as they both look for the same den characteristics. This is why looking for midden is a good way to locate a nearby den. Wolf eels feed on invertebrates such as mussels, clams, and crabs. They can grow to 8 feet in length and over 40 pounds. Wolf eels aren’t true eels, but are related to Atlantic wolffish instead. Alex Wyndham narrates this revelatory, amusing, often poignant amalgam of science and family history in a dark, undulant baritone, a voice that could be that of a big, kindly eel.After descending and getting settled into the dive, our dive leaders always check around for cracks, crevasses, and midden piles (a mound of shells and broken up bits of crab) that might indicate the presence Wolf eel (Anarrhichthys ocellatus). Alas, like so many creatures, the eel is endangered, most likely because of environmental mayhem. Thus equipped, it heads off for the Sargasso Sea whence it came and where it will breed - or is thought to breed, as no mating eels have ever been discovered. A most peculiar character, the eel goes through four distinct phases of being, the last of which involves replacing its digestive system with reproductive organs. Svensson has, quite stunningly, discovered in the natural and human history of the European eel a metaphor for his father’s life and a way to explore questions of knowledge, belief and faith. Translated from the Swedish by Agnes Broomé, Patrik Svensson’s first book combines scientific and cultural history with a memoir of his father, a road paver, who died at 60 from cancer caused by decades of exposure to the fumes of hot asphalt.
He also played Cromwell in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of “Wolf Hall Parts One & Two,” and captures again the man’s voice, its taint of baseness, its ups and downs and quiet ruthlessness. Although the previous two volumes have already been handled by different narrators, Ben Miles - Group Captain Peter Townsend in “The Crown” - has, in addition to narrating this final volume, taken on the massive task of delivering “Wolf Hall” and “Bring up the Bodies,” as well. Our sense of doom mounts as, after Jane’s death, Cromwell arranges Henry’s disastrous marriage to Anne of Cleves, thus galvanizing the unfortunate fixer’s enemies to arrange his downfall. Cromwell, who managed the entire business, is at the zenith of his power, but, history, ever the spoiler, tells us that only four years remain before he, himself, loses his nimble noggin.
WOLF EEL DECAPITATED FREE
Hilary Mantel’s final volume of her trilogy based on the life of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s right-hand man, begins with Anne Boleyn’s decapitated body and a courtier slipping away to tell the impatient king he is now free to marry Jane Seymour. Tovah Ott brings a fine, versatile voice to the narration, capturing character and mood, especially in Wayétu’s voice as a child, her unfolding sense of bafflement, sorrow, terror and eventual joy. In a superb change of approach, she switches toward the end to her mother’s point of view in New York - her fear for her family and resourcefulness and courage in getting them to America. Moore builds terrific suspense, alternating this story with that of her later life in America, of culture shock and the effects of war trauma. So begins a punishing trek alongside other refugees on roads lined with the bodies of murdered people. Suddenly, rebel troops appear on the family’s street and Wayétu, her two sisters, her grandparents and her father flee on foot, leaving practically everything behind. As the country shatters into civil war, she pines for her mother, absent in New York on a scholarship. Beginning in 1990 in Monrovia, Liberia, we find 5-year old Wayétu seeing events through a lens of longing and myth. Wayétu Moore’s artfully constructed memoir is one of the year’s most beautifully written and moving books.
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