That being said, I really enjoyed the book and read it over the span of about a week and a half.

The parts mix, but also don't mix, and it's easy to see how some would actively dislike it. All the same, there is a pretty hard-hitting exploration of grief in the book, and the weight of Marie's loss is keenly felt. Quite honestly, the narrative-within-a-narrative with Howard's tale was fascinating (and definitely a classical literature throwback to cautionary tales from innkeepers and the like), but the pacing felt off because of it. It mixes the two well, but the book did feel like a slog at times. Likewise, it's firmly a weird fiction text, with talk of black magic, strange Eldritch landscapes, and grotesque horrors that legitimately make you squirm a bit. It's dense, it's fairly slow moving, and it's wholly focused on exploring grief and the idea of just how far you'd go to bring a lost loved one back. Having just finished The Fisherman, I can see the arguments on both sides of the fence regarding the book. The Fisherman by John Langan, Zone One by Colson Whitehead, and even The Passage by Justin Cronin, Baltimore by Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden, and the work of Stephen Graham Jones fit into this definition. Whether it's because the denser or more imagery-focused or introspective style bogs down progression a bit or the work seems to be more about themes/ideas than the central horror premise, the hit rate seems pretty mixed with people. What I've noticed over time is that the literary-pulp combination with horror tends to be the most divisive kind of horror on the market today. Again, pretty nebulous (and horror leans pulpy by default), but the difference often comes down to how dense or stylistically-driven a work is and the delivery. On the other hand, anything pulp or pulpy is a bit more to the point, action-driven, and can be everything from pure junk food quality to something surprisingly well-constructed. It's a pretty nebulous definition, but that's literature for you. Whether it's in the wheelhouse of traditional literature (like Frankenstein, Dracula or classic Gothic texts) or heavily informed by literary movements (such as modernism and post modernism), these tend to lean on a combination of exploring ideas and experiences, with the plot facilitating this. Just for context, literary horror in this instance means horror texts that lean more towards traditional literature styles, story arcs, and denser forms of prose. In the past three or so years, I've read about 30 horror books that run the full range from gory trash to full blown classic literature, and having just finished The Fisherman last night, I've got some thoughts on a usually divisive mix: literary horror and pulp horror hybrids.

The fisherman horror novel