Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Weaver Fish
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Perth, Western Australia
STATE:
COUNTRY: Australia
NATIONALITY: Australian
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7390733.Robert_Edeson * http://bookloverbookreviews.com/2015/02/interview-robert-edeson-author-weaver-fish.html
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2014020980
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/n2014020980
HEADING: Edeson, Robert
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010 __ |a n 2014020980
040 __ |a DLC |b eng |c DLC |e rda
100 1_ |a Edeson, Robert
370 __ |c Australia
373 __ |a University of Western Australia
373 __ |a University of Cambridge
374 __ |a Author
375 __ |a male
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a The weaver fish, 2014: |b t.p. (Robert Edeson)
953 __ |a hc11
PERSONAL
Born in Perth, Australia.
EDUCATION:Attended the University of Western Australia and the University of Cambridge.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, consultant anesthetist, and researcher.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to scientific journals.
SIDELIGHTS
Robert Edeson is an Australian writer, originally from the city of Perth. He attended the University of Western Australia and the University of Cambridge. Edeson has worked as a scientific researcher and consultant anesthetist. He has written articles on mathematics, biophysics, and neuroscience, which have appeared in academic journals.
In 2014, Edeson released his first novel, The Weaver Fish. In an interview with a contributor to the Book Lover Review Web site, Edeson stated: “The Weaver Fish is for the roundly educated, attentive reader. It is an exploration of language, authenticity, deception and, ultimately, conscience. Readers who are scientifically and a little mathematically literate will discover the most; psychiatrists, linguists, logicians, others secretly drawn to erotica and academics generally should enjoy it, except historians and clerics, who might be outraged.”
The first chapter of The Weaver Fish is the transcript of a speech given in front of a group of scientists at the University of Cambridge regarding the titular fish. In the speech, the fish is described to have features making it appear similar to a piranha. The following chapter includes detailed descriptions of a building in London. The building, which features an unconventional design, is the site of the 1963 death of a delegate from the embassy of the Soviet Union. The person’s body was hung from a window. Excerpts from an interview in Aviation Reviews magazine appear in the third chapter. The interviewee is Walter Reckles, who wrote a book about about plane collisions that occur during flight. Next, a story line involving a Norwegian-British scientist named Edvard Tossentern emerges.
Reviews of The Weaver Fish were mixed. A Publishers Weekly critic described the volume as “enigmatic” and suggested: “Readers will struggle to figure out how everything connects.” Writing on her self-titled blog, Debbie Kinsey commented: “It’s worth having a go even if you don’t feel science is for you. It won’t make sense in the first few chapters, but persevere, the weaver fish and the giant condor will show themselves to you in time.” A reviewer on the Aust Crime Web site asserted: “You have to admire the bravery of something like The Weaver Fish. It’s not immediately ‘pigeon-holed’ into any obvious category, and it’s not straightforward. That’s the bit that this reader thinks is really positive, good, encouraging about such a book.” A contributor to the Fancy Goods Web site remarked: “It’s a novel unlike anything you’ve read before.” The same contributor added that the book “will provide hours of brain-food to those who enjoy being challenged.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, April 25, 2016, review of The Weaver Fish, p. 72.
ONLINE
Aust Crime, http://www.austcrimefiction.org/ (February 15, 2017), review of The Weaver Fish.
Book Lover Review, http://bookloverreviews.com/ (February 5, 2015), author interview.
Debbie Kinsey Blog, https://debbiekinsey.wordpress.com/ (September 4, 2016), review of The Weaver Fish.
Fancy Goods, http://www.fancygoods.com.au/ (March 21, 2014), review of The Weaver Fish.
Fremantle Press Web site, https://www.fremantlepress.com.au/ (February 15, 2017), author profile.
Robert Edeson was born in Perth, Western Australia, and educated at Christ Church Grammar School, the University of Western Australia and the University of Cambridge. He has been a consultant anaesthetist and researcher, publishing in the neuroscience, biophysical and mathematical literatures.
QUOTED: "The Weaver Fish is for the roundly educated, attentive reader. It is an exploration of language, authenticity, deception and, ultimately, conscience. Readers who are scientifically and a little mathematically literate will discover the most; psychiatrists, linguists, logicians, others secretly drawn to erotica and academics generally should enjoy it, except historians and clerics, who might be outraged."
nterview – Robert Edeson, author of The Weaver Fish
February 5, 2015 by Joanne P Leave a Comment
Today we welcome Robert Edeson, Aussie author of The Weaver Fish to Booklover Book Reviews.
The Weaver Fish by Robert Edeson
Cambridge linguist Edvard Tossentern, presumed dead, reappears after a balloon crash. When he staggers in from a remote swamp, gravely ill and swollen beyond recognition, his colleagues at the research station are overjoyed. But Edvard’s discovery about a rare giant bird throws them all into the path of an international crime ring.
The Weaver Fish is a gripping adventure story. Set on the island nation of Ferendes in the South China Sea, this book’s sound science and mathematical playfulness will make you question all that you know, or think you know, about weaver fish, giant condors, the infamous tornado-proof Reckles Texan hat, and much much more.
(Fremantle Press, 2014)
What inspired you to write The Weaver Fish?
Mischief, really. The idea of testing the limits of reader credulity.
Would you say this novel is plot or character driven?
Neither. It is more a novel of themes. Characters voice the ideas (in dialogue or correspondence, for example), and plot steers the characters along the protagonist Tøssentern’s quest to find weaver fish.
Tell us a little bit about your main character.
There are two main characters, Edvard Tøssentern and Richard Worse, as well as two strong women. Tøssentern is an academic linguist and the more psychologically complex. Worse is the action figure, intelligent, capable, discerningly ruthless, and moral. It is he who takes charge of the thriller developments that lead back to Tøssentern and the weaver fish.
What type of reader do you think would most enjoy The Weaver Fish?
The Weaver Fish is for the roundly educated, attentive reader. It is an exploration of language, authenticity, deception and, ultimately, conscience. Readers who are scientifically and a little mathematically literate will discover the most; psychiatrists, linguists, logicians, others secretly drawn to erotica and academics generally should enjoy it, except historians and clerics, who might be outraged. I recommend those who are crossword puzzlers to read the index, which has several cryptic entries.
How does this title compare to others you have written?
My other publications have been nonfiction, appearing in scientific journals. The Weaver Fish, being almost entirely bogus, was more fun to write, and something of a flight from seriousness in my previous career.
Can you tell us a bit about your writing process (e.g. researched involved)?
Wherever authoritative research, historical background, supporting evidence, academic citations, scholarly endnotes, bibliographic detail, apposite quotations, firearms expertise, aviation science, French fraught philosophy, scriptural passages, lascivious poetry, papal scandal and so on were required, I made them up. This saved a lot of effort and obviated tiresome copyright and defamation concerns.
Do you have any tips or advice for aspiring fiction writers?
For this I defer to my mentor, the profoundly more accomplished A B C Darian, who offers the following:
Write to satisfy the person most interested: yourself.
Writing comes first to the imagination, then to the page. Therefore, in an emergency, rescue your mental life before your stationery.
The artistry of fiction is not realist, but anamorphic. Therefore, live observantly in the world, in order sometimes to copy it, but more importantly not to copy it.
Many things are not the world.
A dictionary is a book of ideas.
But a thesaurus is a resource of wrong words, and too many of them.
The prerogative, and obligation, of fiction is to deceive.
To write a novel, you must swallow its poison.
Write exactly the necessary and sufficient.
QUOTED: "enigmatic" "Readers will struggle to figure out how everything connects."
The Weaver Fish
Publishers Weekly.
263.17 (Apr. 25, 2016): p72.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Weaver Fish
Robert Edeson. Aardvark Bureau, $14.95 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-910709-14-6
Australian anesthetist Edeson's enigmatic debut opens with an edited version of an address delivered to a Cambridge University society regarding
the piranha-like fish of the title, for which there are more "words than reported sightings." Chapter two dwells on an unusually designed London
building, from a window of which was found hanging in 1963 the dead body of a Soviet Embassy attache. Chapter three includes portions of an
interview from the magazine Aviation Reviews with aeronautical engineer Walter Reckles, the author of a controversial book on surviving a
midair collision, which maintains that passengers could pilot "aircraft fragments, particularly a wing, safely back to Earth." Eventually, something
of a focus emerges concerning the disappearance of the Norwegian-British logician, linguist and dream theorist Edvard Tossentern in a research
balloon over the South China Sea. Edeson leavens this whimsical academic send-up with endnotes full of fictional mathematical equations, but
readers will struggle to figure out how everything connects. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Weaver Fish." Publishers Weekly, 25 Apr. 2016, p. 72. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450904555&it=r&asid=26ebb260802efe03c9699b8b8d6f0a35. Accessed 5 Feb.
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A450904555
QUOTED: "It’s worth having a go even if you don’t feel science is for you. It won’t make sense in the first few chapters, but persevere, the weaver fish and the giant condor will show themselves to you in time."
← March reads 2016Where I buy books →
The Weaver Fish by Robert Edeson
Posted on 09/04/2016 by D
the weaver fishThe Weaver Fish is one of those books that’s difficult to put into a neat box. It’s fictional non-fiction, which reads like non-fiction for the first third (including footnotes), and a crime thriller for the final two thirds which weaves in things you’ve learnt from earlier in the book.
It took me a while to get into this, partly because I’d been reading a lot of non-fiction and wanted a break and the first section of this has a very non-fiction style. But mainly I think this is just a book that takes a while to go into. The first third seems like a series of inter-related, though sometimes seemingly not at all related, short (fictional) non-fiction stories. And then, out of nowhere, the final two-thirds are a more straightforward crime thriller, but with more academic, mostly fictional, footnotes about linguistics, ecology, and maths.
I am certain I have a missed a lot in this book. Some of the in-jokes are obvious, like the main character who, as one strand of his academic work, has created a new theory of dreams, and is called Edvard ‘Tossentern’. But I suspect that if I was more familiar with, and paid a bit more attention to, some of the mathematical theory I’d find another layer. If I had the be-botheredness to spend time on it, I have no doubt that there’s something hidden in the fictional index and acknowledgements.
I love the imagery and concept of the weaver fish and the condors (which I won’t describe so I don’t give them away). I also really liked how it dealt with Edvard coming back after being presumed dead, and how he struggled to reintegrate into his old life –
Yes, he was back, but not to reinhabit that imperfect silhouette in a seamless return to his past. He was back, and he was a newcomer.
At times, the book felt like it was trying a bit hard, and, often, the hand of the author was clearly visible in a bad way. The thriller part of the book feels like it relies heavily on coincidence, even though it doesn’t any more than many other crime thrillers, just because of the links with everything you learn in the first part.
It’s not a book that’s for everyone, and I think you’ll get the most out of it if you have at least a little scientific literacy. But, at the same time, it’s so unlike anything else I’ve read that I think it’s worth having a go even if you don’t feel science is for you. It won’t make sense in the first few chapters, but persevere, the weaver fish and the giant condor will show themselves to you in time.
QUOTED: "You have to admire the bravery of something like THE WEAVER FISH. It's not immediately "pigeon-holed" into any obvious category, and it's not straightforward. That's the bit that this reader thinks is really positive, good, encouraging about such a book."
REVIEW - THE WEAVER FISH, ROBERT EDESON
Book Cover
Author Information
Author Name:
Robert Edeson
Author's Home Country:
Australia
Publication Details
Book Title:
The Weaver Fish
ISBN:
9781922089526
Year of Publication:
2014
Publisher:
Fremantle Press
Publisher Website:
The Weaver Fish - Fremantle Press (link is external)
Categories & Groupings
Category:
Fiction
Recommended For Fans Of::
Paranormal
Book Synopsis
Cambridge linguist Edvard Tøssentern, presumed dead, reappears after a balloon crash. When he staggers in from a remote swamp, gravely ill and swollen beyond recognition, his colleagues at the research station are overjoyed. But Edvard’s discovery about a rare giant bird throws them all into the path of an international crime ring.
The Weaver Fish is a gripping adventure story. Set on the island nation of Ferendes in the South China Sea, this book’s sound science and mathematical games will make you question all that you know, or think you know, about weaver fish, giant condors, the infamous tornado-proof Reckles® Texan hat, and much much more.
Book Review
Ever read a book that you know you should just absolutely love, and yet somehow you're not quite getting it. It's a bit like that feeling you get when you're invited to a party and show up in fancy dress only to realise that you'd muddled up the invitations.
The quote for the book is from Robyn Williams, ABC Radio National's The Science Show - "Evocative writing, in which the science is an essential character. The ideas stimulate and mesmerise."
Not having been any good at science at school might be part of the reason (although having sought confirmation from the resident science boffin, he wasn't convinced either), this reader spent most of the book seriously... bemused I think is the most accurate word.
It's undoubtedly clever. There's a weaving (pun intended) of a series of storylines that head into most unexpected territory. Whilst it's employing some very clever tactics, it's also very slyly introducing some "in-jokes". Elaborate joke character names, footnotes nearly as intricate as those that Mr Pratchett is known to employ. And there's undoubtedly humour built into all of that. Which is also perhaps part of the problem. Humour's subjective and when you get a sneaking suspicion that you're not cool enough, or clued up enough to get the joke, it's easy to get a bit put off. And disinterested.
Whilst things did start to get rather interesting somewhere around a 3rd of the way into the book, that thread seem to wander off to stare at itself in a mirror and contemplate the meaning of life, or the proof of 1+2 equalling 2. Don't get me wrong - I know there's such a proof and I know all about how long it took to actually be proved (I watch QI after all), but ....
You have to admire the bravery of something like THE WEAVER FISH. It's not immediately "pigeon-holed" into any obvious category, and it's not straightforward. That's the bit that this reader thinks is really positive, good, encouraging about such a book. I'd just caution that you read the party invitation carefully.
QUOTED: "It’s a novel unlike anything you’ve read before." "will provide hours of brain-food to those who enjoy being challenged
BOOK REVIEW: The Weaver Fish (Robert Edeson, Fremantle Press)
Posted on 21 March 2014 by Books+Publishing
The Weaver FishThe Weaver Fish is fiendishly clever. It brings together so many threads it’s hard to know where to start. From hurricane-proof hats to a mysterious bird of prey that’s perhaps not what it seems, to a thriller subplot somehow tied to financing Margaret River wineries and illegal Chinese logging on a remote island, it all links together, somehow. Many of the quirky characters have punny, aptronymic names that serve to amuse and confuse in equal measure, as do numerous suggestions peppered throughout the narrative that some (or all) of what is going on may well be an elaborate academic hoax. Everything in this intellectual puzzle of a book is underpinned by brilliantly realised but, we can only presume, entirely made-up science, linguistics, psychiatry, history and geography, complete with extensive endnotes. It’s a novel unlike anything you’ve read before, but will provide hours of brain-food to those who enjoy being challenged by authors such as Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges, Neal Stephenson or David Mitchell. It would certainly make for a discussion-stimulating bookclub read!