The Fly Trap, by Fredrik Sjöberg
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The Fly Trap, by Fredrik Sjöberg
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A Nature Book of the Year (The Times (UK))“The hoverflies are only props. No, not only, but to some extent. Here and there, my story is about something else.” A mesmerizing memoir of extraordinary brilliance by an entomologist, The Fly Trap chronicles Fredrik Sjöberg’s life collecting hoverflies on a remote island in Sweden. Warm and humorous, self-deprecating and contemplative, and a major best seller in its native country, The Fly Trap is a meditation on the unexpected beauty of small things and an exploration of the history of entomology itself. What drives the obsessive curiosity of collectors to catalog their finds? What is the importance of the hoverfly? As confounded by his unusual vocation as anyone, Sjöberg reflects on a range of ideas—the passage of time, art, lost loves—drawing on sources as disparate as D. H. Lawrence and the fascinating and nearly forgotten naturalist René Edmond Malaise. From the wilderness of Kamchatka to the loneliness of the Swedish isle he calls home, Sjöberg revels in the wonder of the natural world and leaves behind a trail of memorable images and stories.
The Fly Trap, by Fredrik Sjöberg - Amazon Sales Rank: #220509 in Books
- Brand: Sjoberg, Fredrik/ Teal, Thomas (TRN)
- Published on: 2015-06-02
- Released on: 2015-06-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.78" h x .94" w x 4.95" l, .76 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
The Fly Trap, by Fredrik Sjöberg Review
A New York Times Notable Book of 2015“A badass Swede you've never heard of. . . . One of my favorite books of this year was ‘The Fly Trap,’ by the writer and entomologist Fredrik Sjöberg, who appears to be the Geoff Dyer of Sweden: funny, astute, intellectually voracious, simultaneously self-absorbed and self-critical.” —Kathryn Schulz, The New Yorker, “The Best Facts I Learned from Books in 2015”“Fredrik Sjöberg is like the Karl Ove Knausgaard of entymology . . . completely charming . . . his real focus is the human imperative to find meaning in daily experience. It’s a subject he approaches in a wry and disarming fashion. . . . But The Fly Trap isn’t just a series of artful ruminations on the timeless quest to understand the natural world (although that would be enough, wouldn’t it?). Sjöberg is a genuinely funny guy. . . . The Fly Trap is such an ardent, informed and sustained brief on behalf of the planet that a plea for this or that piece of green legislation seems unnecessary. The very existence of this subtle book is a powerful argument for vigilance.” —Kevin Canfield, The Daily Beast “Seductive reading, a quirky and wide-ranging meditation on the deep pleasures of collecting, obsession and the natural world. . . . Sjöberg’s forthright and unapologetic unpretentiousness is close to liberating in an age when nature writing is so often quasi-theological, veering routinely between awe and homily, sometimes even in the same sentence. . . . He has a gift for identifying fascinating and unconventional careers and rendering them in ways that bring out a deep and affecting longing, a longing for love, beauty, and connection that appears to drive not only his protagonists but Sjöberg himself. . . . The straightforwardness of The Fly Trap is the product of the skill of its author and the sophistication of its structure. Somehow, Sjöberg carries you along on his many excursions and detours, always interesting but often only loosely associative, maintaining the momentum, pulling together a digressive skein of stories across centuries and continents, gently but determinedly insisting by example that calm, patience, good humor, care, and attention and open-mindedness are their own rewards.” —Hugh Raffles, The New York Times Book Review“Entertaining . . . whimsical . . . rich . . . iconoclastic . . . brilliant.” —Richard Conniff, Wall Street Journal“Write brilliantly and readers will follow you anywhere—even into a swarm of hoverflies. That’s one takeaway from The Fly Trap, a charming, off-the-beaten track, humorously self-deprecating memoir by Fredrik Sjöberg, a biologist who muses and amuses about his baffling passion for hoverflies . . . a paean to some of the tiniest wonders of the natural world, but even more to the benefits of intense focus . . . filled with delightful observations . . . The Fly Trap stands as proof that great writing can lend a buzz . . . to even the most unlikely subjects.” —Heller McAlpin, NPR“In sharing the experience of solitude and reflection, Sjöberg invites readers to see through his eyes, in language that is often poetic, sometimes inscrutable.” —Kirkus Reviews“A memoir that reads like summer trapped within the pages of a warm and nourishing book. . . . Although the details about hoverflies are endlessly fascinating, what really elevates this book is Sjöberg's promise to have his memoir concentrate on his two-pronged mission: ‘to say something about the art and sometimes the bliss of limitation. And the legibility of landscape.’” —Poornima Apte, BookBrowse.com (5 Stars, Editor’s Choice)“A rare masterpiece . . . graceful, poetic, astonishing and—yes!—absolutely thrilling.” —Jyllands-Posten (Denmark)“Full of charm, the insects are almost incidental; . . . it’s really a book about how to find meaning in life.” —Melissa Harrison, The Times (UK) (a Nature Book of the Year)“Sjöberg traces a sort of erratic flight path of ideas and associations, at once whimsical and yet laden with erudition and a deep feeling for the natural world and our place in it.” —Carl Wilkinson, The Financial Times (UK)“[Sjöberg] writes with infectious passion.” —Paul Binding, The Independent (UK)“An intriguing defence of the selfish, even hedonistic pleasures of natural history. Thomas Teal’s translation captures Sjöberg’s quiet, hypnotic style, his deadpan jokes.” —Jennie Erin Smith, The Times Literary Supplement (UK)“Wry, digressive and packed with fantastically clipped observations.” —Patrick Barkham, The Guardian (UK)“I often return to The Fly Trap, it remains close to my heart. The minute observations from nature reveal sudden insights into one’s life. Sometimes I almost think that he wrote it for me.” —Tomas Tranströmer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
About the Author Fredrik Sjöberg is an entomologist and lives with his family on the island of Runmarö, in the archipelago east of Stockholm. He is also a literary critic, translator, cultural columnist and the author of several books.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 3 A Trap in Rangoon Many years ago, before the island and the theatre, I took a passenger barge up the mighty Congo River. What an adventure! What stories I would tell! About freedom! But it didn’t happen. I never managed to say much more than that the forests were vast and the river as broad as Kalmar Sound. And that I’d been there. So it goes when you travel for the sake of something to say. Your eyes go weak. All I could have written were endless disquisitions about homesickness. So I kept my mouth shut. It’s a different story with Ladäng Creek, I thought aloud to myself one morning among the bird-cherry blossoms. Then something remarkable happened. I was in the process of rigging up my big California fly trap between a couple of over-blooming sallow bushes down by the creek—a complicated manoeuvre—when suddenly a complete stranger appeared as if from nowhere. He just stepped straight out of the lush June greenery and addressed me politely and apologetically in English. A wood warbler sang its silver song somewhere in the trembling crown of a nervous aspen, and a pike splashed in the shallow water of the creek. The mosquitoes were stubborn in the shade. He said it was me he was looking for. “I’m looking for you” were his exact words. I tried to accept this as the most natural thing in the world, as if strangers could be expected to seek me out wherever I might be. But I failed completely. Instead I stood there like an idiot among the sedge tussocks, amazed and speechless. This man was in fact, and still is, the only person I’ve ever encountered by Ladäng Creek. If you want to be left in peace, it’s a good place to go. Islanders never go there, and the summer people don’t know the place exists. The paths that once led there have now vanished. The name of the creek is not even on the map. For that matter, it’s not much of a waterway, more of a ditch—overgrown, silted up and periodically dry. The meadow barns that are said to have stood there are long gone, as indeed are the meadows. Slowly but surely they’ve been invaded by fir, aspen, birch and alder. All the same, it’s a very pretty place, as rich and spacious as a cathedral when the marsh marigolds bloom in the spring. Deer meet down by the creek, sometimes moose, but never people. Except that day. In the Middle Ages, Ladäng Creek was the channel boats used to sail to a village at the far end of the bay, which rising land elevations eventually turned into a freshwater lake. The village is still there. It’s where we live. How old it is no one knows, but there were probably people living here as early as Viking times. The inner parts of the long bay, where the humus-brown water is very deep, must have made an ideal harbour—a sanctuary that seafarers with base intentions surely hesitated to venture into. The granite cliff drops straight into the water. The village was easily defended against attackers from the open ocean to the east. What ships anchored here outside my window? Who rowed up the creek where today a pike can hardly make its way? “I’m looking for you.”
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Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful. Loved it in all its simplicity yet complexity By Deborah V If you are interested in nature, Sweden or just life--The Fly Trap by Fredrik Sjoberg is a great read. The writing and how the author dealt with the story reminded me a bit of Oliver Sack's books or The Curse of the Labrador Duck: My Obsessive Quest to the Edge of Extinction except Sjoberg's passion is the Hoverfly.The book was originally published in Sweden (and in Swedish) in 2004 and then in 2014 translated into English by Thomas Teal. Teal, in his translations, manages to infuse the story with Sjoberg's wry humor and dry wit which makes the stalking of hoverflies a fascinating endeavor. If you are thinking a book devoted to hoverflies must be boring then fear not Sjoberg weaves together the story with passion, life and the human character.The majority of the story takes place on a remote island in Sweden which is about 15 square miles. There we find Sjoberg in his element and in his passion - stalking the hoverfly. The book delves into Rene Malaise another quirky naturalist, DH Lawrence's The Man Who Loved Islands (Illustrated) (The Short Stories of D H Lawrence) as well as flies, fauna and flora and of course people and their quirks and collecting passions.You'll learn that there are 4,424 species of flies in Sweden with over 368 of those being hoverflies. As the author puts it "But our country is very large and verdant, and the days are so packed with impressions and clamorous informatin that I am forced to limit myself so as not to lose sight of something I am forever seeking...Therefore I collect only on the island. Never on the mainland...so far I have managed to capture 202 species. Two hundred and two. A triumph, believe me. Only the difficulty of explaining is greater." After reading the book you get to know Sjoberg in a sense and you'll imagine him happily running around 'his' island with his Malaise trap and pooters catching hoverflies and with each one joyfully facing and embracing his destiny.The story will especially resonate with those that have a passion for their career. Some are content to have a job, but others want a lifelong career filled with adventure and passion. Whether your choice is teaching, marketing or shall we say stalking a fly--as Sjoberg puts it about his "friend" Rene Malaise "He was secure in the knowledge that, come what may, this was his destiny." And there are worse destinies than spending your life catching flies on a small remote island in Sweden. After reading The Fly Trap--you may just want to move to your own remote island and pursue your passion.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful. The man who never leaves his spot sees so much more... By Patto We get delightful images of the author in these pages – standing perfectly still with his net amidst fig buttercups, marsh marigolds, cowslips and hepatica; setting up his oversized American Malaise fly trap in a creek; napping on the grass and moss in summer and with closed eyes hearing the singular buzz of the narcissus fly; rambling till dawn on his island in the Swedish Archipelago, savoring the warmth, the smells, the mists and the birdsong of a perfect summer night...Fredrick Sjöberg is a hoverfly expert, but it soon becomes clear that he's also a gifted humorist, armchair philosopher, gossip, and raconteur.Of course we learn a lot about flies from this book – hoverflies that disguise themselves as wasps and bumblebees; peripatetic hoverflies notorious for long-distance flying; species of hoverfly so enigmatic that no one knows what they eat or where they come from; even the genus of hoverflies that made their way into the bible...Sjöberg has no interest in adventure. He just wants to collect as many varieties of hoverflies as possible on his tiny island. Yet he has travelled, and his accounts of his travels are most amusing. His hero, Swedish entomologist and explorer René Malaise, was an intrepid and compulsive traveler. Alternating with Sjöberg's observations, factoids, digressions, and anecdotes is a witty biographical sketch of Malaise.Sjöberg flits from one subject to another as erratically as a fly, and his flights are fascinating. I loved every minute of this book, whether the author was using the island as a metaphor for certain states of mind, or discussing his political position on fly immigration, or satirizing the tourists who kept asking him what he was doing.This is a wonderful piece of writing, by an essentially happy man. I didn't want it to end.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Unexpected treat By John G I bought this book based on a review in the Wall Street Journal, and, suffice it to say, it's not at all what I expected. The author lives on a small Swedish island where he pursues and collects hoverflies, and, ostensibly, that's what the book is about. But it's really much, much more, because the author has a penchant for writing about ancillary subjects, and he does it really well. The hoverfly is kind of the common thread through the whole book, but there's history, romance, humor, and other things woven in there, too. The author writes well, and I enjoyed the book a lot.
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