The Travel Memoir Review

The life story of a surf addict seeking the world’s best breaks, capturing the obsession and beauty of riding waves

Review by Sam Baldwin

• Author: William Finnegan
• Book First Published: 2015
• Publisher: Penguin
• Rating: ★★☆

How our ratings work:

★★★ – Loved it. Highly recommended. Transcends interest in the location alone
★★☆ -Liked it. Recommended, especially if you’re interested in the location
★☆☆ -Didn’t like it. But may still appeal to those interested in the location

The Gist

There’s long been a romantic allure to surfing, a pastime viewed by the non-surfing public as all sun, sand and bikini-clad babes. As we discover in Finnegan’s Pulitzer Prize winning memoir, the reality of being a surf addict makes for far more interesting reading: ice-cold waves, venomous sea snakes and lots of shredded skin.  

Barbarian Days documents some 50 years of Finnegan’s surfing life and seeks to explain why surfers are so powerfully pulled to ocean swells. Along with accounts of riding waves in remote locales, Finnegan goes deeper than the monster walls of water that frequently hold him under, sharing details of his romantic and family relationships, his aspiring writing career, and the inner workings of surf culture.

The Guts

Barbarian Days begins in Hawaii, where Finnegan spends his teenage years, after his family move there from California for work. Here, he hones his board skills – often completely alone – in Maui’s swells, and establishes his rank in the pecking order at High School via regular playground fights. This is the foundation of his surfing obsession which leads him to search out new, unknown breaks around the world, at the expense of his college education, career and various romantic relationships.

Finnegan is a surf pioneer, seeking out empty waves that peel perfectly. This was long before the days of Google maps and surf reports. He uses old sea charts and draws on his accumulated knowledge of swells, breaks, and weather patterns, to locate likely surf spots in new, unsurfed locations in Polynesia and beyond.

The life of a travelling surfer, where comfort and stability come secondary to waves, makes for entertaining reading. He captures a now bygone era, surfing at spots unknown to the surfing community at the time. On an uninhabited island in Fiji, the local fishermen who assist Finnegan and his companion, warn of local wildlife:

“Banded sea snakes, highly poisonous, would come ashore by the hundreds each night. It was supposedly the sixth-deadliest snake in the world.”

Camping under the stars for much of these days and living off coconuts and crab meat, triggered a longing in me for such simple living:

“They showed us where the wild papaya trees grew and where the good eating fish tended to run near shore at high tide.”

Finnegan beautifully describes what it’s like to ride a wave, to miss a wave, and to be dashed, damaged and almost drowned by a wave.

“I was flying down the line but all I could see was brilliant reef streaming under my feet. It was like surfing on air.”

Remote ‘surfari’ adventures are blended with Finnegan’s experiences on better known waves in South Africa, Australia and USA, where he also spends extended time. The result is a well-rounded deep dive into surfing as a lifestyle, the relationships and job appendages that come with that, and insight into the inner workings of surf culture:

“The surfing social contract is a delicate document. It gets redrafted every time you paddle out. At crowded breaks, while jockeying for waves with a mob of strangers, talent, aggression, local knowledge and local reputation help establish a rough pecking order.”

Why Read Barbarian Days?

Barbarian Days is as much straight memoir as travelogue, and surfers will inhale it. He goes into heavy detail of dozens of different waves, describing their speed, shape, colour and condition: “crumbly, slappy, sharky, slop.” For non-surfing readers, there is a limit to how many times riding a wave can be described yet remain of interest, and Finnegan may reach that limit.

I have been surfing so few times I would not even qualify as a ‘kook’, yet I was intrigued by his insight into surfing sub-culture and at times envious of his adventures, few of which could be repeated in today’s age of instant internet access and overtourism.

Those with even the slightest curiosity in surf culture will find a thoughtful, entertaining and wistful read that propels us to remote places and captures beautifully the obsessive pull that sucks surfers in, leading them to eschew all else in search of their next wave.