Book Review -- The Dive, Pipin Ferreras

I picked up The Dive by Francisco "Pipin" Ferreras with great trepidation. The book is the story of how Ferreras, the world-record holder in the extreme sport of no-limits freediving, met and fell in love with his wife Audrey Mestre, how she then became a freediver as well, and how she went on to die during a record-breaking dive attempt under his supervision.

Now, to write effectively about lost love -- one of the most difficult things there is to do -- you need to have a very, very light touch. But when you consider that Ferreras has never really written anything before, that English is not his first language and that he is something of a mystic/romantic, you have the potential for some very purple prose.

But there was no way I could skip the book. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to spend time in Miami with Ferreras and Mestre while working on a magazine profile of them. Watching Ferreras move easily up and down through the water, holding his breath for minutes at a time as if having no need whatsoever to breathe, was a humbling experience. And Mestre was a stunningly beautiful, extremely serious woman who seemed to have made very clear decisions on what was important and what wasn't. She was always polite to me, but as a member of the media, I fell into the category of unimportant. Still, I came away thinking that they were both unique people -- people that you just knew were somehow operating on a different level.

For those of you who aren't up on the sport of competitive freediving, it's a strange one. There are three categories: constant weight, where divers swim down and then back up again completely under their own power, wearing the same amount of weight throughout; variable weight, where divers sit on a weighted sled as it drops through the water, then stop and ascend under their own power; and no-limits -- Ferreras' specialty -- where divers ride the weighted sled down, then inflate a lift bag that rockets them back to the surface. And, of course, they do it all while holding their breath.

Ferreras devotes the beginning of The Dive to his rise to international stardom in Europe as a freediver representing Cuba (freediving is a popular spectator sport in many Mediterranean countries), his chafing under the communist system, his personal dealings with Fidel Castro, and his eventual defection. It's all interesting stuff. When he gets to Mestre, however, sure enough, the prose turns a fairly deep shade of purple. Let's face it, some of the world's great writers have difficulty with this stuff. But once Ferreras moves past the early stages of their relationship, he gets back on track -- their efforts to popularize the sport in the US, his record-breaking dives to depths well in excess of 500 feet, the accidents that take their toll on him physically, and Mestre's emergence as a freediver herself.

The final third of the book is devoted to Mestre's last dive and is as compelling as anything I've ever read. Reacting perhaps to his own temporary inability to dive due to injuries, Ferreras plans with Mestre for her to make a no-limits breath-hold dive that will not only break the women's record, but break his record as well -- a dive to 590 feet. The day of the dive is described in excruciating detail, from the weirdly casual approach made to equipment checks and operating procedures, to the circus-like atmosphere on the surface while Mestre tried to enter into the meditative state necessary for such a dive, to the long minutes on the surface well after she should have ascended but hadn't. This is all very good stuff.

I'm happy to say that The Dive is a good read.

It was published in 2005 by Regan Books.