Live Bait
Cameron Pierce
Severed Press
April 7, 2015
Reviewed by Tim Potter
Live Bait is a fantastic new novella from Cameron Pierce, author of Our Love Will Go the Way of the Salmon. Pierce uses his love of fishing to provide a backdrop for a story of loneliness and the search for a human connection at the end world. Two men, who live solitary lives, are drawn together during a fight to land a monster fish. The two men soon become close friends, less because of their similarities that out of their yearning for a human connection. Gordon narrates the story from his point of view and brings the reader into his world, contemporary Portland beset by monster fish.
What will happen to the outsiders, those who live on the margins of society, when the world comes crashing down? Live Bait tackles that question with admirable results. The story is engaging from beginning to end and takes on, at different times, a hallucinatory vibe, the portrait of a friendship, a tale of water monsters and class differences as the known world crumbles. There is a ton of stuff going on is this roughly 80-page story, enough that when you finish it in one sitting, you’ll be left thinking you’ve just read a thousand-page epic.
Earlier this year, Cameron Pierce released Bottom Feeders, co-authored by Adam Cesare, which was also a great yarn about monster fish. The fascinating thing is that Live Bait is as different a story as it can be while still being about man-eating and world-destroying fish. It’s a lyrical, intelligent and emotionally raw story that delivers from beginning to end.
