Book review: The Bass, The River, and Sheila Mant  - W. D. Wetherell  
           The bass, the river and the Sheila Mant is a short story about a 14 year-old boy who likes a 17 year-old girl, the boy or the narrator whose name is not said, loved fishing and that was all he ever thought about before Sheila moved in the cottage by the river next to them. The narrator tries to impress her by inviting her to a concert and trying to act cool.
The way that the boy tries to impress her is that he finds out there is going to be a concert nearby and he asks Sheila if she wants to go and she says yes. The boy has everything planned on how everything will go. he tells her that they will go by canoe since he’s 14 and probably doesn’t know how to drive. Everything seems like it’s going to go well but after a few minutes of canoeing Sheila started hearing a splashing sound and the boy told her that it was bass that was making the splashing sound, and right after he tells her that she tells him that she thinks fishing is dumb and boring, this makes the boy get a little confused on why she would hate fishing that much, the next thing that the boy had to do was try to hide his fishing equipment that he had brought with him. But that’s not the only thing he had to worry about because earlier that day he had cast the rod and the fishing line was still in the water and had somehow had managed to catch a huge bass, so now he also had to find a way to stop the bass from making noise without Sheila finding out that he liked fishing. They arrive at the concert and they dance but then Sheila says that she will go home in a corvette, and after that she tells the boy that he is a funny kid. The story ends by the boy telling us that the spell that Sheila had cast over him to make him like her ended by the end of the month.
My favorite part of this short story was when the boy tries to impress the girl by telling her that there is a concert and that they’ll go by canoe instead of a car since he is 14 and probably can’t drive. This is my favorite part because it is a funny situation that the boy is in since he is 3 years younger than the girl. This is also my favorite part because this is where the whole story basically begins since they’re about to go to the concert and
Where the problem will begin with the bass.
Tone is a literary element used in this short story when the boy and girl are on their way because Sheila calls fishing dumb and says it’s boring even though she has probably never been fishing, the rising climax is when the boy asks the girl if she wants to go to the concert with him. Also there is a pretty huge age difference between them and so that makes it a problem with actions because she’s 3 years older, meaning he can’t drive them to the concert but canoes instead.
I definitely recommend this short story because it is an interesting short story about a 14 year old boy who likes fishing and has a crush on a 17 year old girl who in the end thinks that fishing is boring and thinks that the boy is funny. It is a great short story to read with a good ending where the boy discovers that nobody should change how they act for someone else because there is plenty fish in the sea.
In conclusion I definitely recommend this short story to everyone because the theme/moral is a very important lesson and something that everyone could relate too, the theme is don’t change yourself for someone else or in other words don’t act like someone else when around other people because there is plenty of fish in the sea and that you don’t have to act differently for someone. This short story also tells us that we should pay attention on the important things that we like, not on minor setbacks that keep us from doing the things we enjoy.