The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj by Anne de Courcy (2013 Reading Challenge)

[Ally]

Please use this thread to discuss:

The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj by Anne de Courcy

[Ally]

I've started this one and I'm really enjoying it...but the author doesn't really dwell on any one person or couple for very long and moves between LOTS of different people so it's a little hard to keep track.

I was amazed that there were so few Englishmen in India at any one time.

[Susan]

Have read this before, but just re-reading it now. The author has a tendency of skipping about, but I suppose I am used to her style.

Just reading The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things and Austen's aunt was also in the "fishing fleet", who went to India to find a husband. I didn't realise until I read The Fishing Fleet how early it started and interesting to read how threatened those in charge were that they banned inter marriage and even went so far as to stop the children of mixed marriage obtaining jobs.

[Jan C]

I still haven't been able to find this book anywhere. I'll keep checking at Powell's. It may yet turn up.

[Val]

I have this book reserved from the library, but I can't see where I am in the queue using the online system.
The other book about women in India, Women of the Raj, skips about a lot and I found that a bit irritating, so I am now looking forward to this one rather less than I was.

[Susan]

I have had trouble locating Women of the Raj. Have ordered it twice from second hand sellers and had order cancelled and the library copy has gone AWOL. This is on kindle and in print at least.

It does skip about, but I think the author made a mistake in trying to cover the whole time period. In fact, most of the memoirs/diaries she uses come from the between the wars period.

[Ally]

I don't know how the Englishmen in India coped with the heat and the bugs...that whole chapter made my skin crawl and itch just thinking about it!...also, those poor tigers...I know that attitudes have changed but I still can't imaging hunting and killing such beautiful animals for sport..but it was funny that they had a special tape measure with one inch less per foot so that the most important man on the shoot got the 'biggest' kill...talk about pandering to inflated egos!

[Michael]

I've always thought that G&T was useful for coping with those things that crawl and bire. Hence Indian tonic water, the quinnine in tonic discourages those nasty things.

[Caitlin]

I'm currently reading this - I'm just a few chapters in and already finding it fascinating, but not something to read really late at night - especially as we have to jump from mid-nineteenth to WWI to 1920s and then back again.
I found interesting stories (such as the young woman who joined the fleet after a marriage annulment) but only snippets about the women. When I looked in the index, I found these interesting women scattered throughout with only a few pages here and there.
What I feel could have made this easier to read would be some form of chronological or stronger thematic order with vignettes of specific women who represented what each part was trying to say. This way, these women's voices would be more prominent and identifiable, especially as they adjusted (or, for those sent "home" for schooling, readjusted) to life in India.