I’m well into the Trilogy About A Boy by Stefansson.  I just finished a chapter about six men and the boy who row an open boat, a sixareen, out into the Arctic sea to fish for cod, out of sight of land.  The cadence of the prose, translated from Icelandic, tracks the effort to row in pre-dawn darkness out to the fishing banks; then the wait as six baited lines, one for each man,  hang below the boat for the fish to bite; and, finally, the onset of a howling gale and an angry sea that overtakes them.  It’s a primitive world of men engaged in a fight for survival in a way that, as far as we know, is uniquely human.  Quite good.