Nicholas Herring's novel Some Hellish explores why fishing is a metaphor for life
Some Hellish is a 2022 finalist for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
Nicholas Herring is a writer and carpenter from Murray Harbour, P.E.I. Some Hellish is his debut novel.
Some Hellish won the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers's Trust Fiction Prize. The $60,000 award recognizes the best novel or short story collection published in Canada.
Some Hellish is about a lobster fisher named Herring who is facing the existential dread of what he feels is a boring, mundane existence. That is, until one December day when he decides to cut a hole in the living room floor and alter the course of his life as he knows it.
Through a myriad of absurd and confronting experiences, including his wife and children leaving him and Tibetan monks rescuing him after a near-death experience, Herring is forced to reckon with himself, his fear and what it means to be alive.
Herring stopped by The Next Chapter to talk about his novel.
"When I was out at the Banff Centre, I had a mentor, Anakana Schofield. When I showed her some portions that I was working on, she said, "You know, fishing is the perfect metaphor for everything, really. You're plunging something down into the darkness and you're hoping you'll bring something up that is nourishing and that will sustain you."
"I hadn't really ever thought about that.
"When she put that so eloquently I was like 'Oh shoot, I guess there's a reason the apostles were mostly fishermen and and there's that expression, 'God is a fisherman.' There's a whole bunch of truth to that; fishing probably is the ultimate metaphor for how people live and find meaning.
Fishing is the perfect metaphor for everything. You're plunging something down into the darkness and you're hoping you'll bring something up that is nourishing and that will sustain you.
"Lobster fishing, on P.E.I., anyway, is this incredible industry. It's a ton of work. Your days are long, you're up early. It's very dangerous.
"It's kind of a beautiful industry, in that, given the danger of the job, it's kind of a commonplace thing that men and women are willing to go out on the water and risk their lives so that other people can eat lobster.
"I wanted to write something that was entertaining; something that was beautiful and truthful and difficult. I really wanted to write something that was kind of like life — as I see it at this moment in time."
Nicholas Herring's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
