The Fly Trap: A Memoir
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
“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.
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Fredrik Sjöberg. (2015). The Fly Trap: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Fredrik Sjöberg. 2015. The Fly Trap: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Fredrik Sjöberg, The Fly Trap: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2015.
MLA Citation (style guide)Fredrik Sjöberg. The Fly Trap: A Memoir. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2015.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 2 | 2 |
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- bioText: 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.
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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. - reviews
- premium: False
- source: Kevin Canfield, The Daily Beast
- content: "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."
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- source: Hugh Raffles, The New York Times Book Review
- content: "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,...
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April 1, 2015
A literary memoir by the Swedish author, a man who lives on an island and collects flies, reflecting on the significance of his obsession. Both an entomologist and a literary critic, Sjoberg blurs the border between these two vocations while exploring plenty of other territory as well. "Here and there, my story is about something else," he admits. "Exactly what, I don't know." Readers will share his uncertainty, as he proceeds like one of his beloved hoverflies, flitting from his experiences on an island east of Stockholm to his meditations on time, concentration, and the language of geography to his literary appreciations of D.H. Lawrence, Milan Kundera, and Bruce Chatwin to his investigations into the life of an obscure naturalist-turned-art collector. The author recognizes that devoting his life to flies might not have the romantic resonance with readers that butterflies would, but he finds himself within a realm where "everything flies, absolutely everything," a world that can be read as "a thousand commentaries. An entire apparatus of footnotes." Most of the book takes place within the mind of the author-the connections he makes and the implications he finds-though sometimes he ventures out to provide naturalistic detail of his life on the island or historical inquiry into the lives of entomologists with whom he seems to be having more of a conversation than with any of his living contemporaries. In a rare encounter with another human, who asks what he is doing and why, he reflects, "It is at such moments that the entomologist becomes a story-teller. He is prepared to do almost anything to get someone to listen and perhaps understand. He is prepared to use any ruse or artifice to avoid being the only one who sees." In sharing the experience of solitude and reflection, Sjoberg invites readers to see through his eyes, in language that is often poetic, sometimes inscrutable.
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August 1, 2015
Literary Critic Sjoberg's work occupies the Venn diagram intersection of philosophy, poetry, and entomology--that's entomology with an "n," the study of insects. More precisely in Sjoberg's case, the study of hoverflies, family Syrphidae. While flies may not seem the most lyrical of topics, as the author admits, they are an access point for a book-length riff on facets of the human condition that interest him: the urge to collect and classify, the freedom inherent in a highly limited field of study, ambivalence about travel, loneliness, persistence, and joy. Loosely organized around the story of Swedish naturalist Rene Malaise (1892-1978), inventor of the titular fly trap, the book is not a biography--nor is it a monograph, scientific treatise, or narrative. Sjoberg free-associates yet manages to string his musings together in a way that keeps the work bobbing gently along and doesn't edge into self-indulgence. What this title is really about, in Sjoberg's words, is "the creative imagination that characterizes artists and good scientists." VERDICT This little Swedish koan of a book is not for everyone but will delight those looking for an offbeat and often charming read.--Lisa Peet, Library Journal
Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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“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... - sortTitle
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