Review: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday

I stumbled across this book at my local library, and since I had seen the movie a few months before and really enjoyed it, I decided to read the book too. I used to be a firm believer in the fact that the book is always better, but recently I have changed my opinion somewhat. Saying that, you will probably have figured out by now that I liked the movie more. 

This book is about a man, Alfred Jones, who works as a fishing expert in some sort of consultant firm in England. The firm is contacted by a client who wants to introduce salmon and salmon fishing in Yemen and wants help setting this up. Alfred becomes involved, initially against his will, but through his work with the charismatic sheik and the beautiful Harriet, who is the sheik’s British consultant, he soon becomes invested in the project and it fundamentally changes his life. 

The story is told through various documents, personal and official. There are extracts from diaries and letters, reports, transcripts from interrogations, newspaper articles etc. This format doesn’t really do it for me, personally. I felt like the only people we got to know were Alfred Jones, since a number of pages from his diary was presented, and to some extent Harriet as some letters from her to her fiancé were included. In the beginning the book also seemed to jump around in the time line a bit, first explaining things from Alfred’s perspective, then jumping back and seeing things from Harriet’s perspective, This initial jump made me question the time line every time we changed point of view which was quite often. 

The book was okay, but I liked the movie more. It was easier to connect to the characters and I felt like the relationships were more fleshed out. There are a number of things that are different in the movie regarding these relationships and who does what, and I felt like the relationships in the movie were more fulfilling, if that makes sense. In the book it seemed like no one really got what they wanted. I am not saying every book should have a happy ending, but it just seems like the revelations that the characters had about themselves didn’t really come to fruition that much in the book and it left me feeling sort of unsatisfied on behalf of the characters. 

The book was fine, but if you have seen the movie I see no reason to read the book. I gave it 3 stars out of 5 on Goodreads.