This was book was a minor masterpiece. One tangential insight I gleaned from it regards the PTSD of WW2 on an entire population. I have always reviled the fifties as a decade peopled entirely with characters I would never care to meet, but in this context of war heartbreak the retreat into social rigidity, paranoia, and isolated suburbs, or in this case, fishing community makes more sense... Ishmael is a sympathetic and interesting character...