Sea of Hooks

by Lindsay Hill

Sea of Hooks is a novel structured to reflect the interweaving of the two worlds inhabited by its main character, Christopher Westall. Christopher holds the spheres of ordinary days and weeks in precarious balance against the shifting field of images and voices that lies behind them. A series of traumas shatters this balance. The parallel narratives recount Christopher's youth in San Francisco, where he struggles within the icy Victorian household of his mother, and his subsequent journey to Bhutan for answers to questions that haunt him. Sea of Hooks is comprised of the shattered fragments of Christopher's world and is driven by the forces that compel him to reassemble it...at any cost.

Genres: Fiction, Poetry, Contemporary

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2013

Reviews

[Jeanette · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is lyrical prose and quite imaginative. Rather like stream of consciousness themed paragraphs trying to be poetry? Similar in several aspects to poetry, but especially in evoking a place of emotion. Most, if not all, a sad emotion, or of void or loss. Not in chronological or logical order, or easily discerned in relationship to each other until you truly have worked for it. Tedious. But regardless of ease of read or not, it was not for me. Too depressive and perceptively, for me, too dysfunctional at core- to enjoy reading. I only got about 1/3rd of the way through and called it quits.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating, captivating, masterfully written. This is a book that's straight-up good for humanity to read and to know.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel explores the nature of memory through a series of fragmented scenes about protagonist Christopher Westall, whose youth—marked by a fierce and vibrant imagination—and his trip to Bhutan—after his mother’s suicide—form parallel narrative tracks through this rich, complicated, and stunningly beautiful book.

Within these two tracks, Christopher returns to certain memories over and over, finding new insights into the patterns and relationships he’s yearning to decipher, including his collection of “messengers,” street debris that he brings home to study. Christopher’s relationship with his mother forms the emotional core of the book, and Lindsay improvises brilliantly on the theme of brokenness, and what it means to each of his characters, and how Christopher feels he must shield his own flaws from his mother or be relegated to the broken pile. To connect the pieces, and to create a frame for the whole of this particular life he’s rendering on the page, Lindsay offers titles for each of the fragments, some of them repeating to keep us grounded and to remind us that this, over here, connects with that. It’s a remarkable, unusual, and very effective structure.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a strange one. Episodic parcels of prose, many written poetically. In fact, when you hit the italics, you know you're getting into the protagonist's troubled head and thought patterns are going to be a little squirrely. Well, the kid's a bit messed up. His mom is as vulnerable as an eggshell in a weight room. A tad "different," and trying to shelter the kid. His dad is all about business. The old story. Neglects Sonny Boy a bit. And in one particularly disturbing segment, he falls prey to a predator. So if he's messed up to begin with, he's in worse shape after that. Luckily, there's Dr. Thorne, the neighbor guy who speaks in koans and comes to the boy's rescue. And, all along, little bits about Buddhism, leading to the end where our hero travels East in search of succor.

A bit overlong. Kind of like reading a collection of poetry, almost. Heavy sledding for a sustained run makes it challenging. But it does contain some fine writing. If you like poetry, you should give it a look-see, I think. I got it because Kirkus Reviews insisted it was THE book of 2013. For me, nowhere near -- but I don't know books like Kirkus, do I....

[Dayna Lovell · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a novel. Characters are developed, stories told. There is a setting and a plot. However, this novel is a discovery. It is written in passages that read like poems. Often they are indeed poetry. The passages are the internal dialogue of Christopher, ponderings sometimes deeply philosophical, sometimes confessional, sometimes they sound schizophrenic. These questionings and observations do not follow a linear pattern. Sometimes more than one passage gets grouped by topic. This book is not for everyone. It is especially suited to those who are interested in Buddhism, Tibet, psychology, the Tao the Ching, those with a philosophical bent, those who love poetry, those willing to delve into the soul.

[Constance · Rating 3 out of 5]

The interesting format allows viewers to piece together Christopher's life from his boyhood with a mentally ill mother and alcoholic father to his connived journey to a Buddhist monastery in Bhutan. Hill's poetic descriptions of Christopher's inner life are strikingly beautiful. They would have been more affecting kept to a much smaller amount; as it is they became tedious, and I found myself skipping them completely after the first 200 pages. The book also suffers from a stunningly unattractive cover--just have to say it.

[Melissa Zimmerman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I made it about 60 pages in and gave up. It just didn't hold my attention. The fragmented writing style made it very easy to put down. When I read a novel, I'm not looking for poetry. I thought about sticking with it and maybe it would have been rewarding in the end, but there are too many other books out there I want to read. Not worth my time.

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book of 2013.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fall into the language of this book. Can be used as a talisman.

[Kyra · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't know how to feel about this book. It gave me a sickening and beautiful headache.

[Vidhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a lot of, almost contradictory, thoughts on this novel. It’s up & written in such a unique fashion with each paragraph titled with the story it’s telling. With that story being rippled across the novel and rarely told in one sitting, this book caught my attention.

But this niche style was almost also its demise. It kept it difficult to be completely engaged when every page shifted tones and stories so fast — some only a sentence long!

Furthermore, it felt hard almost to empathize with the character when the novel started with him so young. I’m usually not interested in the thoughts of an eight year old. That might also be a minority opinion in general — I also didn’t love to Kill a Mockingbird for that reason.

Yet while it was quality fiction and decent writing, the three stars on my end might solely be in how I had to *try* to be entertained by this as opposed to it occurring naturally, as more talented authors can whip up. Furthermore, speaking on the quality of writing, while it added to the character, there were so many instances of nonsense ramblings that were almost immediately skipped. Sure, it gives you a sense of Christopher, but who wants to waste time reading all that?

And finally, I was wholly unsatisfied with the ending. It was too Kafka-esq for me. Nonetheless, glad I read the book!

[Arjun Raghavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"How the shattered shapes are whole things in themselves."

wowee i have never read a book like this. how do you tell the story of a man shattered by trauma? you shatter the story. each paragraph is a different memory, out of place and out of order. the book is a puzzle, not a neat jigsaw puzzle but the kind you get when you drop a delicate bowl of china on the floor. some fit easily back together, some look alike but belong on opposite sides, some pieces are too small or irregular to comprehend, some pieces mix with unrelated debris to form new shapes altogether.

the fragmentary narrative makes reading through otherwise dense, poetic prose a little more digestible, but it's still a book that's difficult to read for long stretches at a time. chew 32 times before swallowing.

i would've underlined half of this book, but i am not a filthy book defacer. if phil at arundel books recommends a book to you, listen to him 🫡

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a novel written by a poet, and it took over 20 years to finish. When you read this book, you can feel the amount of work that was poured into it and its poetic sensibilities - the way the book's titled fragments link, the recurring themes and symbols, and the weight and meaning of words imbue this novel with layers and layers of meaning. The result is an immensely compassionate and beautiful story about suffering, healing, death and rebirth.

[Barbara Nutting · Rating 2 out of 5]

Totally bizarre !! Each paragraph is titled like a chapter - it leaps around in time and locale and includes tons of psychobabble. I ended up just reading the San Francisco parts and skipped Bhutan and the mumbo jumbo. That part was OK - but to be honest, even at the end I’m not sure what happened. Christopher says his “brain is broken” - I think it is the author with the broken brain.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://jukeboxmuse.com/2014/02/20/an-...

Title: Sea of Hooks

Author: Lindsay Hill

Label: Fiction

Published in: November 2013

Jukebox: “The Great Gig in the Sky” by Pink Floyd has a complex backstory: the song started out as just an instrumental track. Then Alan Parsons brought in singer Clare Torry to layer her voice over the instrumentals. At first, she had a tough time understanding what the band wanted, but once it was suggested she think of herself as an instrument, magic happened. The moment when Torry begins singing is like an awakening, and Sea of Hooks has many of those moments.

This novel is an experiment. Can a story of a boy rise up out of the ashes of messed up dreams, one-liner revelations, and familiar metaphors? Can we understand a person through pieces and snippets randomly dispersed throughout the pages of this book, or do our minds only function and analyze in a neat, chronological order where everything is spelled out for us?

So one can see from those heavy questions above why it took me about two months to finish the novel. It was a not a comfortable read: lots of backtracking and scratching of the head. The entire novel is written in paragraphs, each with a title. Some have continuity, some are impossible to understand as anything but a stranger’s memory. But even though the entire novel is split up into messy stream-of-consciousness paragraphs, they are all connected as one larger story. Hooked together, one might say.

Despite the eventual tying together of all the paragraph’s topics, the novel’s fractured structure, among other things, ultimately prevents it from working as a cohesive entity. The traditional plot (yes, it’s there, if barely) is also boringly dramatic: alcoholic father + OCD/depressed mother = messed up childhood for Christopher, the main character. These characteristics are important and effective in a lot of other esteemed literature, but all I see in this set-up is the desire to make characters interesting by making them severely messed up. I know when a character is well-designed because I care about her/him/it (Barney, Arya Stark, Nick Fury). Sadly, I don’t really care about Christopher, or his parents. It’s an easy line to cross, balancing genuine characters and keeping readers interested.

Consequently, it’s better to think of Sea of Hooks as many wonderful yet disparate parts rather than a convincing story. Many of Lindsay Hill’s trains of thought are beautiful, not only for the ideas they engender but because Hill writes prose like poetry. Two of them stand out:

1. In the first half of the novel, there are several paragraphs called “Christopher Reading.” It’s never clear whether Christopher is autistic, dyslexic, or whether his mind just sees things differently, but it’s like he has so much imagination that he can’t read. Reading requires a certain amount of reining in your own imagination to follow the author’s path. Christopher lets his imagination ride off into the sunset and thus his mind is everywhere but the book in front of him:

He would pass through the page, barely brushing its sides as he fell through, and then he would come up a long way away in the teeming open water of thoughts and words and images and memories, and the little guided tour provided by the book was lost to him, but the Wonder Ocean was found.” (110)

2. The second train of thought, with paragraphs titled “The City of Messengers,” also deals with the inner workings of Christopher’s mind. As a boy, Christopher has a habit of collecting random trash: crumpled receipts, keys, and anything else he finds on the street. He collects these “messengers” because he believes that each object is contributing to a larger message. The problem is, Christopher never completely finds out what it is. Though this specific train of thought is very vague, I see Hill’s point: Christopher sees meaning in everything. Apparently he is an amazing bridge player and bond trader because of this unique “sight.” That’s why the novel had to be written in this bizarre paragraph fashion: the all-encompassing message that Christopher is always looking for is the same as Lindsay Hill’s goal in writing this book: every paragraph is a messenger with an individual message. All Hill hopes for is the possibility that his sea of messengers will give the reader one great big message at the end.

Well, I finished the book, and I don’t know what the message is. Maybe I didn’t read carefully enough. Or maybe Lindsay Hill hasn’t figured it out either.

There’s one statement later in the novel that describes the value of Sea of Hooks. In a paragraph called “You Can’t Walk the Sun With Your Fingers”, Christopher is looking at a box full of things belonging to a friend’s dad who disappeared and abandoned his family:

Many of the things were unremarkable, but mixed among them, many fine things shone, many very fine things, things very valuable and rare.

Sea of Hooks may not be a masterpiece, but the amount of abstract thinking in this novel is at least convincing. Maybe time will help bring Lindsay Hill and Christopher’s musings together.

Rating: 6 - okay, but it could be better: would recommend with qualifiers; many inconsistencies that raise my eyebrows.

[T. Augenblick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerfully disturbing expression of child sexual abuse and its effects. It ends on a note of tenuous hope, but one gets the feeling that this is a desperate hope, and that there is no permanent salvation but only repeated crawling out of a pit, falling back in, crawling back up again ...

[Maddelyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't able to get at cohesion after a single reading, but stunning passages (incantations?) like the following make me wish more poets would write novels (!):

GRIEF

Grief keeps coming back with the same things in its hands--Grief comes back again, its hands full of the same things arranged differently--Again and again, grief only has a few things in its hands to show you--With its few things arranged differently, grief seems always fresh--Grief comes back with its hands held out again--Again and again, grief holds the same few things--These few things grief comes back with over and over.

[and]

DAYS OF THE WEEK

Slogging along one foot before the other--Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday--week after circular week. But the day itself, what was its name, what was the actual name of the day itself? Day of birds in great number, day of the shadows of trees across your bed as you wake, day of the waterfall thin and small, day of the river of cars, day of fog and walking. How would you live each day if it had its own name?

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unique book constructed in an interesting manner. Christopher Westall’s life is told through short vignettes, some only a sentence long. I’m not sure this is technically YA, and it does alternate between Christopher’s childhood and present day, though mostly it feels coming-of-(difficult)-age. While I enjoyed the unique format and there are many interesting insights here, most notably revolving around Christopher’s father, I had trouble sinking fully into the story. It’s told in a very straightforward manner, which works most of the time, but sometimes feels a little remote. (Though, admittedly, there were several quite heartbreaking passages). Also, this is random, but this book is filled with italics. At least a few sentences, if not paragraphs, are italicized on most every page. I found this distracting. Not the author’s fault per se but I wonder about the decision to structure it this way? This book was on many best-of lists and while it’s certainly memorable, and Christopher himself a winsome character, I did not enjoy it as much as I hoped.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange book, made up of little sections (they may be chapters, they have titles, but some are only a sentence long, and there's no page breaks.) These sections skip around, mostly between two sections of the main character's life, but still form a coherent story. Lyrical, almost poetic, this not-quite-book weaves a complex story of family and obligation.

The main character is Christopher Westall, who struggles with his past, a difficult childhood with his unstable mother, and the present where he tries to understand why his past unraveled as it did. His life is complicated by the amount of secrets he can't speak--the sea of invisible hooks everyone else is hung up on. Unseen hurts, lies, and promises anchor people to past pain. But he needs to understand, so search he will.

Full of dysfunction and tragedy, this books doesn't pull any punches. The first line lets you know how it will go, and it gets no happier from there. Still, it's well written, if sometimes obscure, and an interesting read.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Sea of Hooks” begins with a poem and then begins the story, organized into titled sections of a series of single paragraphs (and sometimes single sentences), loosely connected thematically, but not always chronologically. The structure itself was somewhat off-putting to me from the start, but as I was more drawn into the story, it became less distracting. The story centers on Christopher Westall, an only child growing up in San Francisco. We start with the suicide of his mother when Christopher is a young adult, and eventually go back to his childhood, then to the present day, and then back and forth again, with big loops through time. At many points, I was not sure at what point in his childhood or life we were hearing about, but it was okay. It is more of a dream, then a concise narrative. It is a fractured story, but this serves to reflect the fractured parts of Christopher as he deals with his troubled childhood and his abuse by a trusted friend.

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to read, hard to review. About 30 pages into this one, before I read the back cover flap, I said to myself, this probably took him 20 years to write. And then after I finished it and read the flap copy trying to figure out what the book was supposed to be about, it said as much. Bravo to that and to writing essentially a 300+ page prose poem. He worked for those words and every word is perfect. No chapter breaks, only small titled segments, or fragments. Disconcerting structure that somehow worked, although around pg. 150 or so I wondered if I'd be able to tough it out and make it to the end. I loved Christopher's childhood story, beautiful and heartbreaking and disturbing, and always fun to read about San Francisco, but the overlaid philosophical bits (very Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) were a chore to read.

[Chrissy Gardiner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh. This is by a local author and has been getting rave reviews, so I picked it up. I made it to the end, and there is some really interesting stuff in here, but it's a book written by a poet and reads as such. I will be the first to admit that poetry is not really my thing, and I struggled a bit with lots of the passages, as in "let's get on with the PLOT already". But there isn't much of a plot, and things jump around all over the place. The entire book is written in little tiny sections from a sentence to a few paragraphs long. It's relatively depressing. If you love poetry or the very literary, you might want to give it a try. If you like straightforward, well-plotted novels that go somewhere, this is definitely not it.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not easy to read. But it was worth it. I’m glad I read it. It’s written in the form of little headings over paragraphs, sentences, and in very rare cases a few paragraphs. The reason I’m glad I read it is that I found it to be a fascinating look at memory and the way memory works and the way healing works. Christopher, the central character, has the bits and pieces of memories and dreams weaving in and out of one another. One of the most helpful things to me about that - was to face the fact that this is how memory works - not only for the character, but for all of us. I thought it was a particularly clear picture of humanity and thinking and brokenness and healing.

[Judith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I found this book difficult. The format was interesting and I enjoyed much of the writing, but it was a challenge for my linear brain. It took a lot of concentration for me to stay focused and I felt as thought I lost a lot of the narrative threads and missed important pieces of the story. That said, there were many thought-provoking themes - the nature of memory, brokenness, friendship, secrets, the meaning of objects... and the usual disfunctional family element and childhood sexual abuse. You might love it, but you'd need to be in the right frame of mind and I do think it is best if you can read it in one big run, if possible, rather than doling it out over weeks.

[Jacob Seifert · Rating 1 out of 5]

I feel very conflicted about this book. On one hand, it's beautifully written with richly-developed characters. On the other hand, it's totally unreadable for lack of plot, direction, and driving conflict. I fully understand the difference between plot-driven and character-driven novels, and I often enjoy character-driven novels, but this is just a bunch of short scenes that meander through a life, leaving no sense of momentum. I'm not one who always demands high action, but there has to be some sort of hook for me to continue reading such a dense book other than "Ooooo! Pretty words!" That's not novel writing. That's just linguistic acrobatics.

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An experimental, stream of consciousness book length poem of the life of Christopher Westall; his dysfunctional parents, fractured childhood and his journey to become whole.
Harrowing, heartrending and imaginative.

Gabe Habash says it so much better.

http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blo...

[Kalen]

Did not finish. I really liked the story but after a while, I found the format getting in my way. A shorter, tighter novel would have worked better. I returned this to the library the day it was due, but then checked it out again the next day, deciding I wasn't ready to give up on it yet. It's been sitting here for three weeks and I have not been motivated to pick it up again. Maybe at another time, I'll give it another shot.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most interesting books I've ever read. The prose requires slowing down and reading more carefully than a typical novel, and it's formatted in bursts of thought instead of chapters. The beautiful language and philosophical tone are probably what kept me going, even though it was slow and tedious in places. It's innovative approach is part of its appeal - this wouldn't have been as interesting as a straightforward novel, I don't think.

[Megan Rosol · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suspect that this book of novelistic, philosophical fragments may be brilliant if read very slowly. It's written by a poet who spent twenty years writing it and it may take an extra few weeks for a good reader to contemplate its full beauty. As for me, I tasted and appreciated a few pages but I must move on now.

[Rhonda Hankins]

I really liked this book. A lot. However, the format is not linear and unlike anything else I've read so don't expect a typical novel. You may decide it isn't your thing, but it is worth checking out just to appreciate the originality and creativity.

This book review gives a good description of Sea of Hooks, https://electricliterature.com/review...