Withasharpeye for telling details, he avoids satire and bathos and creates characters of a rare complexity, which his incisive yet passionate visual style (with its rare attention to light and its absence) realizes empathetically.
If the book is entertaining, it is because Fen Montaigne is a better writer than he is a fisherman, withasharpeye for character and a gentle awareness of the gulf between his world and the one he is travelling through.