Fishing with Tardelli: A Memoir of Family in Time Lost

By Neil Besner

A literary meditation on memory, time, love, and loss

Fishing With Tardelli contemplates the relations among four parents -- mother, father, stepfather, and a Brazilian fishing companion -- and the author. Over marriages and remarriages, fathers and mothers become stepfathers and stepmothers, and brothers gain and lose stepbrothers and half-brothers, sisters and half-sisters across two continents. The various homes become part of Besner's internal geography; memory, dream, story, fable become permeable layers folded over bald facts baldly stated.

Beginning with an older man's recollections of himself as a young teenager fishing with Tardelli in the bay in Rio de Janeiro, the memoir reflects on time lost and time regained. The narration ranges across the mid-'40s in Montreal, where two couples marry, divorce, and remarry in a new configuration; proceeds to Rio de Janeiro in the mid-'50s, when one of these newly formed families emigrates; and returns to Montreal in the late '60s and early '70s. After a 50-year interlude, Besner returns from Western Canada to the pandemic moment in Toronto.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 177041634X
• ISBN13: 9781770416345
• Release Date: May 2022
• Publisher: ECW Press
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 4.9" x 6.9"