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Book Review: Imperfect Solitude by Tom Mahony

matt — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 00:52:08 +0000

Book Review

Imperfect Solitude by Tom Mahony
Casperian Books, 210 pages, $15.00
Releases December 1, 2010

Apropos to current coastal land development issues from Santa Cruz to San Francisco and points north (see “Big Wave” Development fight being waged in Half Moon Bay), Imperfect Solitude, a new novel by Central Coast writer and surfer Tom Mahony (Slow Entropy; the tweet novel Dead Glass), incorporates the local NorCal battles between environmental concerns and development greed into a Chandleresque plot line with surfing biologists, a sell-out scientist, a wealthy San Francisco real estate mogul, a neurotic, hypochondriac mother, a homeless Vietnam vet, and, of course, a hot, but non-committal, environmental activist babe for the love triangle subplot. Oh, lest I forget, there’s also drunk, druggy, and often nude roommates and friends all too familiar to SF flatmate vets.

As a working biologist, Mahony has lifted natural world details from his own professional knowledge and experience to fill settings and set up character conflicts. The protagonist, Evan Nellis (a surfer), dealing with the recent, mysterious death at sea of his father, is hired as a greenhorn biologist at PDT Biological Consulting in San Francisco. He is tutored, roughly, by Gordon Shaw (a surfer), a gruff and unfriendly biologist at PDT, but a guy who is an expert at what he does—evaluating land tracts and watersheds for environmental impact reports that could save or doom natural habitats. PDT works closely with a tycoon developer, Richard Headley (yes, dick jokes ensue), and it is this relationship between a biological consulting firm and a developer that creates both external and internal conflict amongst the characters. Add in Sarah, an environmental activist and ex-fiancé of Gordon, who Evan falls for heavily, and we have a love triangle that tangles the plot nicely. With personal and family debts weighing down Evan and his hypochondriac mother, the plot and subplots thicken. Ultimately at stake is Evan’s rural homestead that includes Solitude Beach, a heavy mysto beachbreak where his father taught him to surf and that serves as a moral barometer—as well as does Sarah—for Evan.

Tom Mahony has created a very entertaining read, especially if you are a surfer familiar with San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and the well-known, somewhat known, and mysto San Mateo County surf breaks (names changed to protect the secrets). The dialogue is excellent at revealing characters in an authentic and instantly familiar way, and the verbal sparring only seems forced a handful of times. Mahony employs a fair amount of metaphors and similes, often within the phrasing of a biologist, with most being pertinent to the characters and the situation. For example, “Sarah was a precious resource they both wanted but couldn’t both have, like the critters they surveyed, fighting over scarce territory.” However, there were a few similes that came out a bit forced and were perhaps overkill. The descriptions of the Outerlands and other ‘hoods of SF are fun to read, and Mahony does a fine job of portraying surf session moments.

If you are a fan of Raymond Chandler or Kem Nunn (Tapping the Source), Imperfect Solitude is definitely up your alley. Bonus if you are a surfer—especially a NorCal/Ocean Beach surfer, an environmental activist, a greedy land developer, or just a plain old San Francisco citizen. This is a fun novel to read on a surf-deficient day.

Excerpt from Imperfect Solitude:

Evan peered from his sleeping bag into the dawn. Damp chill washed over his face. Seagulls frittered about the shoreline, eyeing him as a potential scavenge. He retreated to his cocoon and savored the cozy stupor for a minute before emerging onto the sand.

He stomped for circulation and hobbled toward the ocean. Onshore wind burrowed down and scraped his bones. His body ached from yesterday’s trudge. He rubbed his back, cursed Gordon, and understood why so many employees quit after three weeks.

The morning light was soft and grainy, the eastern sky streaked orange. A wind-swell rumpled the Pacific. The water looked murky and frigid with upwelling; undoubtedly a cold and difficult paddle, ice-cream headaches and muscle fatigue. A surf, no matter how marginal, would clear his head. Bury the bullshit. Nobody could tell him how to ride waves. But the prospect of sliding into a damp wetsuit made him shiver. A coastal drive with doughnut, coffee, and blasting heater held more appeal. He decided based on the calculus of lethargy: the ocean had to offer waves sufficient to justify his suffering. It didn’t.

Evan approached his wagon and glanced toward the water. The breeze went slack. A wave peeled to the sand. Clean, symmetrical. For a moment the ocean turned smooth and inviting. He leaned against the hood and scratched his belly, wishing he hadn’t seen the wave. Inertia battled escapism, his inner loafer thumb-wrestling his cosmic drifter. Another glassy wave taunted him. Done. He slipped into his tattered wetsuit, grabbed his surfboard, and paddled out.

Thirty feet off the beach, he ducked under the first wave. Gallons of Pacific Ocean penetrated a wetsuit hole and rushed down his back. The set persisted and so did he. Endless paddling. His head numbed, arms jellied. Three weeks of hole-digging stabbed his right shoulder.

Though usually a tough paddle, Solitude Beach never denied him access. This was his spot. He knew it intimately, had mastered its moods. He’d seen others flail in the tricky current while he paddled by unscathed. But this morning he verged on collapse. Defeatist thoughts crept in. The car heater beckoned. No. He summoned the old resolve and paddled west. He crested a final wave and saw flat horizon. A few more strokes and he straddled his board in calm water.

Evan caught his breath and glanced around. The sheer mudstone wall flanking the cove loomed in the gathering light. Bright domes of alder and dark spires of Douglas-fir lined the canyons. Coastal terraces were covered in grassland, foothills textured with scrub. Pasture and farmland checkered the valley. Not a soul was visible. Few people surfed Solitude Beach. A dozen better spots dotted the local coastline. For years, Evan and his dad had mostly soloed the place. It had a mystique, a reputation as a heavy spot not to be trifled with. They took pride in it, an inside joke. A secret for which they were the sole trustees. Now Evan guarded it, alone, like the last survivor of some lost civilization.

Lines on the western horizon pulled him from thought. He dropped into the first set wave, turned, and streaked forward ahead of a whitewater avalanche. Wind bit his cheeks and stung his nostrils as he carved across the wave contour. The wave barreled fast and long until it collapsed in a slurry of water and sediment. Rather than hazard another paddle, he straightened out, dropped to his stomach, and rode whitewater to the beach.

He stood on the sand and studied the ocean, marginal at best, one wave and out. But he felt recharged: a few minutes of respite, a few minutes of truth.

He issued a curt, satisfied nod. “Good enough.”

Book Review: My Daddy Taught Me to Surf

admin — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:12:58 +0000

My Daddy Taught Me to Surf
By Joseph Tomarchio; Illustrated by Shane Lasby
Published by Taught 2 Me Books
List Price: $14.99

Reviewed by Courtney McCaffrey

You’d better live close to the beach if your child reads My Daddy Taught Me to Surf, because your little boy or girl will want to go surfing. If you do decide to take your child surfing, author Joseph Tomarchio will have your little one prepared for the waves before they finish the last page. My Daddy Taught Me to Surf doesn’t teach your child to swim or even how to maneuver a surfboard on the wave, but provides information about key parts of surfing that are often overlooked.

Tomarchio’s story is about a young boy who spends many mornings watching his father surf. The boy’s father decides to teach him how to surf, but, first, he instructs him about the parts of a surfboard, basic surfing terminology, and the importance of respecting the beach, ocean, and fellow surfers.

Many of the lessons taught in Tomarchio’s story can help prevent confusion and injury in the water. Even more importantly, the story shows children what a positive and fun experience surfing can be. The narrator of the story relates the feeling of surfing to flying, a feeling to which every surfer can relate.

The illustrator, Shane Lasby, combines excitement and education in his drawings to appeal the story to young readers. His sketches are simple yet explanatory, helping kids grasp the different parts of a surfboard and varying shapes of waves as well as their components. The enticing images of the seashore, sunsets and peeling waves will make children want to spend more time enjoying and appreciating the beach than indoors.

Parents will enjoy the story as much as their children, as it serves as a reminder of the many reasons we all love the sand and surf. Any reader who has surfed before will undoubtedly relive the first time they rode a wave through the thoughts and actions of the main character. The messages of respect for the beach and one-another are lessons any reader can take away with them, surfer or not.

So if you’re looking to spice up your little boy or girl’s reading list this holiday season, I’d certainly recommend My Daddy Taught Me to Surf. It’s important to be aware that if you buy the book, you’ll probably need to buy a grommet surfboard too.

Book Review: Ride Your Inner Dragon

admin — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:34:23 +0000

Ride Your Inner Dragon

By Von Gevert

Represented by lulu.com

Reviewed by Courtney McCaffrey

Ride Your Inner Dragon is Von Gevert’s 100-page description of his own self-improvement theory. Gevert, a self-described extreme sports “Adrenaline junkie,” believes one can find peace in all of life’s stressful situations by taming a hypothetical dragon in the brain that flares up every time anxiety or nervous feelings are experienced.

The book begins with a background in dragon theory. Background is a great way to strengthen the reader’s knowledge base before entering a complicated subject, but Gevert makes some crucial mistakes in these opening portions. He describes dragons in mythology and pop culture, quoting Chinese literature without citation, as demonstrated on page 12 of the manual. Poor citation continues from the opening paragraphs through the book’s entirety.

Chapter Two, beginning on page 18, kicks off “scientific” articles on brain research found on Wikipedia. If the reader hasn’t questioned the author’s credibility from the numerous grammatical, spelling and structural errors within the first 18 pages, they are sure to be skeptical about scientific research from one of the least credible research sites on the Web, Wikipedia.

The author’s expertise is questionable throughout the book. Gevert uses Wikipedia as his main source of scientific research complimented by movie quotes, song lyrics and personal stories. Most information regarding psychology and brain structure is not cited at all. Whether or not the Dragon Theory is effective becomes irrelevant because the author never establishes trust with his reader.

It is possible Gevert is correct about the need to calm a hypothetical creature in the brain when emotions begin to stir, but by reading this piece alone, no one will ever know. Though the author is sincere in his effort, if he had placed more effort in finding credible sources and hired an editor to correct the mistakes in sentence structure, spelling, excessive comma use and formatting, he may be on to something. Until then, none of us will fully understand how calming our little mind dragon can help us become better surfers.

Music Review: Guns for San Sebastian

admin — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:10:55 +0000

Guns for San Sebastian

Self-Titled Debut Album (2009)

Reviewed by Courtney McCaffrey

Up-and-coming rock band Guns for San Sebastian seeks to shake up the music scene outside of its native San Francisco Bay area with a recently released self-titled debut album. Released on February 28, 2009, the album meshes powerful vocals with pleasant melodies and guitar solos mimicking Tom Morello and Jimmy Page. Most simply stated, the vocals and melodies presented in this album are a satisfying fusion of The Black Crowes and The Black Keys.

Guns for San Sebastian presents a refreshing and diverse sound to a generation of listeners smothered by teenage pop stars and synthesized voices. The album predominantly fits in the blues-rock genre, but sounds are drawn from a variety of artists and locales. “Almighty Dollar,” the first song on the album, combines country-western influences and tones with an American blues-roots feel. The band unites genres throughout the album, merging modern rock with blues, roots and indie rock inspiration. “Our Own Way,” listed as track 7 on the debut album, demonstrates characteristic indie rock influences with vocals similar to Kings of Leon or The Strokes and guitar styles reminiscent of 1950s rock.

Lead singer Charlie Marvin’s solid vocals combined with fluent chord progressions from the strings are obvious elements contributing to the band’s success, but it’s the distinct addition of JJ White’s whaling harmonica that sets the band apart from and possibly above its indie rock counterparts. Listening to Guns for San Sebastian’s debut album leaves its listeners thankful that this new-age rock band hasn’t forgotten its roots in the blues.

Shark Happens: A Century of Research Comes Up With Clear Danger Zones for White Shark Attacks on Humans

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 15:23:16 +0000

Book review by Ben Marcus

SHARK ATTACKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY:
From The Pacific Coast of North AmericaRalph S Collier.
263 pages + 28 forwarding pages
9 x 12 inches, in color.
$60
Scientia Publishing, LLC
Buy it!

Ralph S. Collier, the author of Shark Attacks of the 20th Century: from the Pacific Coast of North America, cannot imagine why surfers-of all people-would be interested in his book. Collier thinks that sharks are the last things that surfers would want to read about, but this just proves that Collier knows a lot more about sharks than he does about surfers.

Surfers are fascinated by sharks in the same way that field mice are fascinated by owls. Surfers ponder the nature and philosophy of sharks just as a grasshopper ponders the nature of a brown trout, or a small frog ponders the nature of a large-mouth bass. Surfers are fascinated by sharks because there is something chillingly anachronistic about a modern, 21st Century alpha-human getting chomped by a prehistoric Fed Ex truck with teeth. Surfers are fascinated by sharks, and especially white sharks because they are not only incredibly large, but also incredibly swift and cunning and dangerous. Surfers are fascinated by sharks because a shark attack can turn a killer sesh into a gnarly sesh very, very quickly.

Ralph Collier doesn’t know this about surfers, but he does know more about White Sharks and their behavior than just about any human alive. The founder of The Shark Research Committee, Collier lives safely in Van Nuys, California but has his finger on the pulse of the Pacific Coast. Since 1963, Collier has been studying, researching and gathering information on shark attacks on humans, and he has condensed 40 years of that into his book with the long title that says it all.

Within S.A.O.T.20TH.C.F.T.P.C.O.N.A Collier has detailed every confirmed shark attack from 1926 to 1999, between La Jolla, California and La Push, Washington. He found 108 shark attacks, most of them White Sharks, and they are all in this book, in detail that is both clinical and gory, with color photographs, charts and maps that are also clinical and occasionally very gory.

Case Number One happened in 1926, when a boy and his dog were attacked by the same shark off a beach in Alameda. Case Number 108 was Jack Wolf, who was attacked by a shark at Waddell Creek in 1999. The shark got its pound of flesh from both the boy and his dog, and Jack Wolf got a gnarly ding. In between those two cases are 106 others, all of them dramatic, because there are few human experiences more dramatic than being chomped by a White Shark. If you are any bit of a surfing shark aficionado you will find your favorites in here: Hans Kretchmer’s close encounter off Point Sur in 1972; the tragic death of kneeboarder Lew Boren off Asilomar Beach in 1981; Eric “Lucky” Larsen’s brush with death at Davenport Landing in 1991 and who can forget Michael Sullivan, who was attacked by a White Shark while sailboarding off Davenport Landing in 1991.

John Ferreira, Kurt Johnston, Rodney Orr: They’re all in here and each attack is analyzed and broken down in detail that is equally fascinating and horrifying.

At the end of those 108 cases, Collier analyzes, bubbles and boils all that information into bar graphs and charts which plot all those attacks in a variety of variables: month of the year, time of day, day of the week, victim activity, victim age, water temperature, water depth and a dozen others, some of them more than a little interesting to surfers.

The results are more than a little interesting to anyone who is interested in sharks, or in staying alive. Collier finds a big spike in attacks in the months of August, September and October, as 50% of all the attacks happened in those three months. Breaking the attacks down by activity of the victim, 50% of the attacks were on divers and 38% were on surfers and the rest were on swimmers and kayakers. Collier found that White Sharks prefer water temperature below 60 degrees, and the majority of the attacks happened in water 1 – 3 fathoms (6 to 18 feet) deep over a sandy bottom. An interesting fact to surfers is that attacks on surfers occur frequently at or near the site of a previous attack, and all locations are very similar geographically- as one might expect.

Perhaps the strangest statistic Collier comes up with is that of those 108 cases, only 8 resulted in death. Consider that the average size of an attacking shark was 5 to 6 meters, and that a shark that big easily weighs two tons, a thinking person wonders why 15 to 18-foot, two-ton animal with razor-sharp teeth would go to all the trouble to attack but not kill.

Collier attempts to explain this by breaking down shark attacks into three categories: mistaken identity and/or predation, investigation and displacement/self-defense. That means White Sharks attack us not because they are hungry or evil, but because they thought we were seals, they didn’t know what we were, or they didn’t know or care what we were, they just wanted humans out of their turf.

Since Case 108 in Collier’s book, there have been seven White Shark attacks on humans along the Pacific Coast of North America in the 21st century. Six were on surfers, which means the times (and tastes) may be a changing.

If you are a surfer who is interested in sharks, or if you are a surfer interested in keeping all your limbs and staying alive, then S.A.O.T.20TH.C.F.T.P.C.O.N.A is a must-read. Reading Collier’s finely detailed Twentieth Century statistics carefully and plotting your surfing carefully might just prevent you from becoming a statistic in the Twenty First.

*Buy Ralph Collier’s newly-released book “Shark Attacks of the Twentieth Century- from the Pacific Coast of North America” at Amazon.