I’ve heard surfers praise Barbarian Days for capturing else the joys and sorrows of surfing—its “special brand of monomania,” to use Finnegan’s phrase—better than anything else. To this non-surfer, Finnegan’s account of life in and out of the water is vivid and precise—whether on fellow surfers’ styles, etiquette in the water, his own wanderlust, or the slow work of growing up—and as propulsive as any of the waves he rides. Surf’s up.
— Sam