by Boomert - The Patron Saint of Eels by Gregory Day 08 Jan 2010

The Patron Saint of Eels (Gregory Day, Picador, $22 pb, ISBN 0330421581, April) ****

You know those books where when you finish, you need to pause for a moment, holding the book tightly, because it was just so lovely? The Patron Saint of Eels is one of those. The blurb focuses on Fra Ionio, the saint of the title, who has come to a Victorian coastal town following his flock who migrated from Italy post-war. As a result, I was expecting a book far more mystical than this tale, which is largely grounded in the day-to-day machinations of an (admittedly atypical) week in a small town. That is not to say that it was disappointing. In fact the opposite. Waking to an odd noise, Noel finds the ditches outside his house filled with eels, washed there by heavy rain. They are thrashing frantically in their unfamiliar and crowded environment. Responding to the eels’ distress, Ionio arrives in the town where he helps to rescue the eels and meets and spends the day with Noel and his friend Nanette. Like most fables, a plot summation tells you little, but this is a gentle, thoughtful, beautiful story with great, human characters—particularly Ionio, the unearthly character, with his tender feet and love of chocolate—and a welcome new voice in Australian fiction.

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2005, Thorpe-Bowker