Close to Shore

Close to Shore is a little slow to get going and could have been a much shorter book. There is a fair amount of stage setting, and the first shark attack doesn't occur until about one-third of the way through the narrative. But Capuzzo does much with limited source material and includes many interesting asides on everything from the lore of sea monsters to the bathing-suit fashions of the day to nearly everything science knows about great whites, which, it turns out, is surprisingly little. Alternating from the victims' perspectives to the shark's, Capuzzo's descriptions of the attacks are a blend of horrors and thrills:

Charles Bruder felt a slight vacuum tug in the motion of the sea, noted it as a passing current, the pull of a wave, the tickle of undertow. He could not have heard the faint, sucking rush of water not far beneath him. He couldn't have seen or heard what was hurtling from the murk at astonishing speed, jaws unhinging, widening, for the enormous first bite. It was the classic attack that no other creature in nature could make--a bomb from the depths.

There is no doubting that the story is compelling. Bathers being eaten by a great white shark, general disbelief that it was a shark causing the deaths, mayors and other business interests wanting to keep the beaches open, the shark making its way into a river to eat kiddies. The parallels between this episode and Peter Benchley's fiction in Jaws is amazing, no doubt this story was one of his sources.

The descriptions of the attacks, and the contempory reports and anecdotes make compelling reading. However, the theories about the shark are muddled - almost a century of conflicting theories from rogue man-eaters, to immature shark to freak weather conditions lead to lack of clarity on why the shark attacked. If we are unsure then the Mr Capuzzo shouldn't be afraid to say so.

All in all a fascinating, but flawed read.


A shockingly frank account on a historic summer in 1916   March 25, 2002
 2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Whilst much of the world was at war in 1916, an extraordinary sequence of events was occurring off of the New Jersey coastline.

A Great White Shark, having arrived through the gulf stream, begins savaging bathers. At a time when recreational bathing was in its infancy, scientists at first did not believe the attacks to be the work of a shark.

It is not until the shark swims up a brackish creek in Matawan just miles from New York City and kills a young boy and one of his rescurers does the truth emerge....

A thoroughly good read documenting a period of history long since passed.


Don't read this if you like to swim!   October 16, 2001
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book is about a series of shark attacks in New Jersey in 1916. The author beautifully evokes the time and place and really gets into the skin of the characters (no pun intended!).

As well as teaching this reader quite a bit about American history, the book offers a fascinating look into the world of the great white shark. Very little is known about these creatures and Capuzzo intersperses chapters so that we get a sharks-eye view of the world.

I feel the book took a while to get going but it is definitely worth persevering with. Capuzzo builds the suspense well and has produced a thrilling, tragic and exciting tale.


A simply extraordinary account   July 27, 2001
 1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Cappuzzo demonstrates a remarkable insight, not only into the spirit of an era but of the faultlines exposed in humanity's limitations and in the progress of science, medicine and ichtyology, by the realisation that depite man's grand presumption of superiority, territoriality truly divides nature. That the feeding of the oceans' 'apex predator' could so dismantle the beliefs and theories of science and heroism, is more an indictment of the period's fragile complacency.

I simply cannot recommend Capuzzo's book highly enough. As can be expected from a four time Pulitzer Prize nominee, his prose is incisive, exciting and never predictable. The book was beautifully written, from the politics and fears of a nation on the verge of joining the Great War to the stark brutality of the sharks search for sustenance.

Capuzzo has thoroughly researched his marine biology and his description of the sharks journey along the Eastern seaboard is charachteristically astute and riveting. A dramatic insight into the "rogue shark" theory.

Read this book. Whether you're interested in the era that spawned "The Great Gatsby" or the dynamics of an unusual and historical event of man against beast, you will never regret this purchase.