Fishing for Amber dazzles with its weave of narratives and the sheer pleasure taken in unwinding the three narrative strands: ribald telling of tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses, dark and disturbing Irish fairy stories, and fantastic tales of 17th-century Dutch painting. The universal theme is that of transmutation and the power of art: of light captured on canvas, experience immortalized in narrative. Stories branch infinitely into other stories, each connecting, and each fishing for the truth. The central image of amber, of light or creatures captured in it, transformed by it, is sustained throughout the book.