BOOK REVIEW –

July 8, 2021 – How convincing this book is as a therapeutic primer, I am utterly unqualified to judge. What I can say is that you don’t need to love or even be interested in surfing to feel passages like this one land powerfully between your shoulder blades: “The freedom of surfing is oceanic captivity. The first wave, the one that creates the surfer, is bondage. What characterizes the origin stories of surfers and their first waves is fatalism, the resignation and love of the captive for his captivity.” A wave isn’t water, Ziolkowski writes at one point. “Waves are cylinders of storm energy that displace water.” Similarly, “The Drop” isn’t really a book about surfing, or addiction. It’s a paper rectangle of stormy, gorgeous energy.

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