What do you think?
Rate this book
Seul l'océan pour me sauver
“Ici l’autoroute ne part que vers le sud. C’est dire comme on est au nord.”
Une ville de pêcheurs sur la côte est américaine, loin des axes et gangrenée par la pauvreté et l'alcoolisme. Face à l’océan, une jeune femme attend le retour de son père, disparu dans l'eau, onze ans auparavant sans laisser de traces. Il lui a laissé un lourd secret: elle est une sirène perdue parmi les humains. Entourée par une famille aimante mais excentrique, composée d’un grand-père absorbé par la création d’un dictionnaire inédit et une mère ayant grandi sur une île peuplée uniquement de malentendants, la jeune femme tombe amoureuse jusqu’à l’obsession de Jude. Vétéran de la guerre en Irak, de retour au pays avec de nombreux traumatismes, ce dernier se refuse à elle. Pourtant, notre héroïne ne désespère pas de quitter cette vie qui la retient et de prendre la fuite à ses côtés. Par la route. Ou par la mer, pour retrouver son père et accepter enfin une vie de sirène, loin des hommes.
Comment échapper à la réalité, au deuil et à une condition sociale difficile quand on n’a plus rien? En réinventant le réalisme magique dans une Amérique au bord du gouffre social et économique, Samantha Hunt offre une histoire d’amour d’un genre unique, pétrie de poésie, d’images surréalistes et d’une subversion toujours teintée d’humanisme.
Une ville de pêcheurs sur la côte est américaine, loin des axes et gangrenée par la pauvreté et l'alcoolisme. Face à l’océan, une jeune femme attend le retour de son père, disparu dans l'eau, onze ans auparavant sans laisser de traces. Il lui a laissé un lourd secret: elle est une sirène perdue parmi les humains. Entourée par une famille aimante mais excentrique, composée d’un grand-père absorbé par la création d’un dictionnaire inédit et une mère ayant grandi sur une île peuplée uniquement de malentendants, la jeune femme tombe amoureuse jusqu’à l’obsession de Jude. Vétéran de la guerre en Irak, de retour au pays avec de nombreux traumatismes, ce dernier se refuse à elle. Pourtant, notre héroïne ne désespère pas de quitter cette vie qui la retient et de prendre la fuite à ses côtés. Par la route. Ou par la mer, pour retrouver son père et accepter enfin une vie de sirène, loin des hommes.
Comment échapper à la réalité, au deuil et à une condition sociale difficile quand on n’a plus rien? En réinventant le réalisme magique dans une Amérique au bord du gouffre social et économique, Samantha Hunt offre une histoire d’amour d’un genre unique, pétrie de poésie, d’images surréalistes et d’une subversion toujours teintée d’humanisme.
192 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2004
277 people are currently reading
21671 people want to read
About the author
Samantha Hunt
21 books826 followersSamantha Hunt was born in 1971 in Pound Ridge, New York, the youngest of six siblings. She was raised in a house built in 1765 which wasn't haunted in the traditional sense but was so overstuffed with books— good and bad ones— that it had the effect of haunting Hunt all the same. Her mother is a painter and her father was an editor. In 1989 Hunt moved to Vermont where she studied literature, printmaking, and geology. She got her MFA from Warren Wilson College and then, in 1999, moved to New York City. While working on her writing, she held a number of odd jobs including a stint in an envelope factory.
Samantha Hunt received a National Book Foundation award for authors under 35, for her novel, The Seas. The Invention of Everything Else was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She won the Bard Fiction Prize for 2010.
Samantha Hunt received a National Book Foundation award for authors under 35, for her novel, The Seas. The Invention of Everything Else was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She won the Bard Fiction Prize for 2010.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,493 reviews
March 5, 2022
Magical realism is the best genre on earth and it's been way too long since I last read it and I love it so much and I will never make this mistake again, until probably immediately when I will once again forget, or be lazy because literary-adjacent magical realism with beautiful writing and stunning themes is hard to find and I don't like exerting energy.
File this under "hard to find," because it's beautifully written and magical and gave me that throat-hurting sad feeling when usually I feel very little at all, either in reading or in life.
The only reason, really, that this isn't an even higher rating is that I need to have that certain something for a five star and I'm not sure if I did.
Maybe will decide upon reread.
Either way, it's incredible stuff.
Bottom line: I'm in heaven! Except then I remember I read this already and therefore can't have the experience of reading it again and then I'm sad.
--------------
pre-review
i need to find the nearest ocean, stat.
and then also it needs to be 70 degrees warmer.
review to come / 4.5 stars
--------------
currently-reading updates
last year, i made a rule for myself that i can only buy myself books i've already read and liked.
this results in very normal things like seeing a book in a bookstore almost 2 years ago, adding it to my to-read list immediately based on cover alone, and then not even thinking about picking it up until i remember how pretty it is and immediately read it so i can justify buying it.
let's see how this goes
--------------
tbr review
received a Medal of Valor for my actions on this book (saw it in a bookstore, almost bought it immediately for the cover alone, then just added it to my tbr for the cover alone instead)
File this under "hard to find," because it's beautifully written and magical and gave me that throat-hurting sad feeling when usually I feel very little at all, either in reading or in life.
The only reason, really, that this isn't an even higher rating is that I need to have that certain something for a five star and I'm not sure if I did.
Maybe will decide upon reread.
Either way, it's incredible stuff.
Bottom line: I'm in heaven! Except then I remember I read this already and therefore can't have the experience of reading it again and then I'm sad.
--------------
pre-review
i need to find the nearest ocean, stat.
and then also it needs to be 70 degrees warmer.
review to come / 4.5 stars
--------------
currently-reading updates
last year, i made a rule for myself that i can only buy myself books i've already read and liked.
this results in very normal things like seeing a book in a bookstore almost 2 years ago, adding it to my to-read list immediately based on cover alone, and then not even thinking about picking it up until i remember how pretty it is and immediately read it so i can justify buying it.
let's see how this goes
--------------
tbr review
received a Medal of Valor for my actions on this book (saw it in a bookstore, almost bought it immediately for the cover alone, then just added it to my tbr for the cover alone instead)
July 12, 2013
This book comes closer to my own pain than any other book I've read.
I don't know how to talk about it. I feel a little shaken.
I don't know how to talk about it. I feel a little shaken.
December 8, 2008
The Little Mermaid Grows Up
A review by Alexis Smith
Samantha Hunt has written a layered debut novel, part fairy tale, part bildungsroman, and part meditation on the imprecision of language. It is a story that will sound vaguely familiar: a girl grows up in a small town, with its small town locales (laundromat, shipyard, shabby houses), its small town occupations (primarily drinking), and its small town tragedies (men lost at sea). In this setting, the unnamed narrator longs to escape her dreary existence as a seasonal worker in the sardine factory and sometime chambermaid at a rundown motel called the Seas. The twist is that this heroine believes she is a mermaid.
This part of the story should sound familiar, too: a young woman, who is secretly a mermaid, lives on land and falls in love with a sailor. In this case, the young woman's father once told her she was a mermaid, and later walked into the sea, never to be seen again. And the sailor, Jude, is a veteran of the Gulf War and thirteen years older than the young woman. What makes Hunt's novel particularly compelling, is the narrative voice. Unlike a fairy tale, this story is told in a clear, unfaltering, and totally unreliable first person. The narrator spins a tale full of strange scientific findings, arcane nautical history, poetic delusions, and obsessive love. The setting provides the perfect foggy, ethereal atmosphere for the heroine, who lives in a crooked old house with her mother and paternal grandfather, both of whom are in various stages of grief over the losses of their spouses.
Like Hans Christian's Andersen's The Little Mermaid, the heroine of Hunt's novel struggles to communicate with those around her -- though not because she is mute. Her difficulty has more to do with her inability to process her father's suicide. In fact, all the characters of The Seas have problems expressing their feelings, and this inability to tell the tale, as it were, manifests itself in a preoccupation with words and their various meanings. Throughout the novel Hunt explores the ways in which language evades, escapes, or fails the characters. This aspect of the novel, which includes occasional dictionary entries, could come off as precious, but Hunt executes it with precision and grace. Each character has a different sort of preoccupation with language, and in a novel in which almost everyone is "stuck" physically and emotionally, their fixations become charming idiosyncrasies.
The grandfather is a particularly interesting character. A former typesetter who wooed his wife by sending her backwards love notes in trays of type, he has been setting the type of his own personal dictionary for years. In one passage he asks the narrator, her mother, and Jude about the Russian word razbliuto.
"We don't have a word to match it but we should. We should develop it tonight because the word means, 'the feelings one retains for someone he once loved.'"
"Hate?" Jude says.
"No, not that feeling," my grandfather answers and looks at Jude with disappointment.
"Betrayal," my mother says without looking away from her book.
"No," my grandfather says. "It's the little house love moved out of, maybe a hermit crab moves in and carries the house across the floor of the tidal pool. The lover sees the old love moving and it looks like it's alive again."
The magic of this story is in the lines like the grandfather's. A word is lost, or hasn't come into being yet, and in its place is a whole narrative that endeavors to express it. The mother and grandfather both hold onto feelings for their lost loves, and just as they have no word in their language equivalent to razbliuto, they have no words for the losses they feel.
Hunt's characters are so jammed up with stories -- losses they need to express and grieve -- that words physically manifest around them. Jude first meets the narrator at the beach when they are both looking for something in the water. "We watched the water between us rushing back out to sea and I swear I saw the ocean fill up with words, like Jude was bleeding all the things he couldn't tell anyone because it might kill him." Jude finally does tell his story, but I won't ruin the surprise: suffice it to say that a war in the desert is a shocking, but not unwelcome, addition to this dark, watery novel.
The narrator, too, is afraid of what speaking her story might do to her. Instead of facing the fact of her father's suicide, she creates the mermaid narrative to give order to her unmanageable grief. An outcast in the depressed, alcoholic town, her secret, mythical identity explains her feelings of difference and alienation. Hunt never names the narrator, as if she were a character so foreign that it takes a whole story to figure out who she is. But to readers, she is an uncannily familiar character, and her tale is as intoxicating as a siren song.
A review by Alexis Smith
Samantha Hunt has written a layered debut novel, part fairy tale, part bildungsroman, and part meditation on the imprecision of language. It is a story that will sound vaguely familiar: a girl grows up in a small town, with its small town locales (laundromat, shipyard, shabby houses), its small town occupations (primarily drinking), and its small town tragedies (men lost at sea). In this setting, the unnamed narrator longs to escape her dreary existence as a seasonal worker in the sardine factory and sometime chambermaid at a rundown motel called the Seas. The twist is that this heroine believes she is a mermaid.
This part of the story should sound familiar, too: a young woman, who is secretly a mermaid, lives on land and falls in love with a sailor. In this case, the young woman's father once told her she was a mermaid, and later walked into the sea, never to be seen again. And the sailor, Jude, is a veteran of the Gulf War and thirteen years older than the young woman. What makes Hunt's novel particularly compelling, is the narrative voice. Unlike a fairy tale, this story is told in a clear, unfaltering, and totally unreliable first person. The narrator spins a tale full of strange scientific findings, arcane nautical history, poetic delusions, and obsessive love. The setting provides the perfect foggy, ethereal atmosphere for the heroine, who lives in a crooked old house with her mother and paternal grandfather, both of whom are in various stages of grief over the losses of their spouses.
Like Hans Christian's Andersen's The Little Mermaid, the heroine of Hunt's novel struggles to communicate with those around her -- though not because she is mute. Her difficulty has more to do with her inability to process her father's suicide. In fact, all the characters of The Seas have problems expressing their feelings, and this inability to tell the tale, as it were, manifests itself in a preoccupation with words and their various meanings. Throughout the novel Hunt explores the ways in which language evades, escapes, or fails the characters. This aspect of the novel, which includes occasional dictionary entries, could come off as precious, but Hunt executes it with precision and grace. Each character has a different sort of preoccupation with language, and in a novel in which almost everyone is "stuck" physically and emotionally, their fixations become charming idiosyncrasies.
The grandfather is a particularly interesting character. A former typesetter who wooed his wife by sending her backwards love notes in trays of type, he has been setting the type of his own personal dictionary for years. In one passage he asks the narrator, her mother, and Jude about the Russian word razbliuto.
"We don't have a word to match it but we should. We should develop it tonight because the word means, 'the feelings one retains for someone he once loved.'"
"Hate?" Jude says.
"No, not that feeling," my grandfather answers and looks at Jude with disappointment.
"Betrayal," my mother says without looking away from her book.
"No," my grandfather says. "It's the little house love moved out of, maybe a hermit crab moves in and carries the house across the floor of the tidal pool. The lover sees the old love moving and it looks like it's alive again."
The magic of this story is in the lines like the grandfather's. A word is lost, or hasn't come into being yet, and in its place is a whole narrative that endeavors to express it. The mother and grandfather both hold onto feelings for their lost loves, and just as they have no word in their language equivalent to razbliuto, they have no words for the losses they feel.
Hunt's characters are so jammed up with stories -- losses they need to express and grieve -- that words physically manifest around them. Jude first meets the narrator at the beach when they are both looking for something in the water. "We watched the water between us rushing back out to sea and I swear I saw the ocean fill up with words, like Jude was bleeding all the things he couldn't tell anyone because it might kill him." Jude finally does tell his story, but I won't ruin the surprise: suffice it to say that a war in the desert is a shocking, but not unwelcome, addition to this dark, watery novel.
The narrator, too, is afraid of what speaking her story might do to her. Instead of facing the fact of her father's suicide, she creates the mermaid narrative to give order to her unmanageable grief. An outcast in the depressed, alcoholic town, her secret, mythical identity explains her feelings of difference and alienation. Hunt never names the narrator, as if she were a character so foreign that it takes a whole story to figure out who she is. But to readers, she is an uncannily familiar character, and her tale is as intoxicating as a siren song.
June 3, 2018
This book has destroyed me. I'm dead. Dead.
September 6, 2025
✨ MERMAID OR MADWOMAN? ✨ The Seas is a novel that balances between the real and the surreal, told through the voice of a nameless protagonist. She believes she may be a mermaid, destined for the ocean, yet is equally a young woman dealing with grief, unrequited love, and the isolation of a dying town. It’s a story of dead ends, lost dreams, and the fragility of the mind, set against the haunting backdrop of a small, coastal community.
When I first started this book, I struggled. I’m not always comfortable with ambiguity, and Hunt plays with it masterfully. Like many works of magical realism, it requires the reader to let go of the need to differentiate between what’s real and what isn’t. In the first hundred pages, I spent too much time trying to figure out the mechanics of the world. I was so focused on separating reality from fantasy that I missed the point—I needed to trust Hunt, to let her be the driver of this experience.
Once I surrendered to the book’s flow, I was rewarded with something profound. The Seas is hauntingly beautiful, dark, and heavy—like the sensation of stepping into a room with thick air, where every breath feels fuller, carrying a gravity that you can't shake off. Our protagonist is trapped between two worlds: one steeped in myth and fantasy, and the other grounded in harsh reality. This book is a meditation on isolation, grief, and obsession, particularly in how those things can warp our perceptions and desires.
"When you are young, living in the North, sadness can make you feel like you have something to do. Sadness can be like a political cause, almost, or a religion or a drug habit. It takes a lot of work to stay sad."
The setting—an isolated seaside town filled with alcoholism and stagnation—feels as trapped as the protagonist herself. Hunt’s ability to pull the reader into this dreary, tragic environment, while still making us want to uncover more, is impressive. The town, its people, and even its air feel suffocating, yet you find yourself desperate to understand it all.
"There is little else to do here besides get drunk and it seems to make what is small, us, part of something that is drowned and large, something like the bottom of the sea, something like outer space. Drinking helps us continue living in remote places because, thankfully, here there is no one to tell us just how swallowed we are."
One of the most difficult parts of reading this novel for me was how much the protagonist reminded me of someone I used to know—a dear friend who was trapped in an obsessive, destructive love. While the protagonist’s obsession is not the same, it mirrors a similar intensity and desperation, and I found myself both concerned and empathetic. Hunt captures this nuance beautifully, swinging the reader between empathy and fear, admiration and discomfort. The protagonist’s obsession with Jude, an older man who has returned from war, is so deep, wild, and fragmented that it left me unsettled.
"Some nights I want (him) so badly I imagine I am giving birth to him. I pretend to sweat. I toss and wring my insides out. Mostly I think this because that's how badly I want (his) head between my legs."
This novel touches on themes of female sexuality, identity, power, and the fragility of mental health. It’s a deeply atmospheric read, filled with cold winds, crashing waves, and emotional turmoil. The book’s dreamlike ambiguity, which had initially frustrated me, became one of the elements I appreciated most. It allowed the novel to blur the lines between reality and fantasy, making it both unsettling and magnetic.
As I reflect, I realize that the other books I’ve read recently, which also played with magical realism, struggled to capture the balance that The Seas achieves. Hunt’s writing dances on the slippery edge of reality and imagination, drawing the reader into a misty, cold landscape where meaning and truth are as elusive as the waves themselves.
My advice to future readers is simple: don’t overthink it. Let the story wash over you like the tide. Don’t fight the ambiguity—trust Hunt to guide you through the gloom. By the end, you’ll feel a subtle, lasting sense of having been haunted by the ocean’s depths. 🌊🩶
When I first started this book, I struggled. I’m not always comfortable with ambiguity, and Hunt plays with it masterfully. Like many works of magical realism, it requires the reader to let go of the need to differentiate between what’s real and what isn’t. In the first hundred pages, I spent too much time trying to figure out the mechanics of the world. I was so focused on separating reality from fantasy that I missed the point—I needed to trust Hunt, to let her be the driver of this experience.
Once I surrendered to the book’s flow, I was rewarded with something profound. The Seas is hauntingly beautiful, dark, and heavy—like the sensation of stepping into a room with thick air, where every breath feels fuller, carrying a gravity that you can't shake off. Our protagonist is trapped between two worlds: one steeped in myth and fantasy, and the other grounded in harsh reality. This book is a meditation on isolation, grief, and obsession, particularly in how those things can warp our perceptions and desires.
"When you are young, living in the North, sadness can make you feel like you have something to do. Sadness can be like a political cause, almost, or a religion or a drug habit. It takes a lot of work to stay sad."
The setting—an isolated seaside town filled with alcoholism and stagnation—feels as trapped as the protagonist herself. Hunt’s ability to pull the reader into this dreary, tragic environment, while still making us want to uncover more, is impressive. The town, its people, and even its air feel suffocating, yet you find yourself desperate to understand it all.
"There is little else to do here besides get drunk and it seems to make what is small, us, part of something that is drowned and large, something like the bottom of the sea, something like outer space. Drinking helps us continue living in remote places because, thankfully, here there is no one to tell us just how swallowed we are."
One of the most difficult parts of reading this novel for me was how much the protagonist reminded me of someone I used to know—a dear friend who was trapped in an obsessive, destructive love. While the protagonist’s obsession is not the same, it mirrors a similar intensity and desperation, and I found myself both concerned and empathetic. Hunt captures this nuance beautifully, swinging the reader between empathy and fear, admiration and discomfort. The protagonist’s obsession with Jude, an older man who has returned from war, is so deep, wild, and fragmented that it left me unsettled.
"Some nights I want (him) so badly I imagine I am giving birth to him. I pretend to sweat. I toss and wring my insides out. Mostly I think this because that's how badly I want (his) head between my legs."
This novel touches on themes of female sexuality, identity, power, and the fragility of mental health. It’s a deeply atmospheric read, filled with cold winds, crashing waves, and emotional turmoil. The book’s dreamlike ambiguity, which had initially frustrated me, became one of the elements I appreciated most. It allowed the novel to blur the lines between reality and fantasy, making it both unsettling and magnetic.
As I reflect, I realize that the other books I’ve read recently, which also played with magical realism, struggled to capture the balance that The Seas achieves. Hunt’s writing dances on the slippery edge of reality and imagination, drawing the reader into a misty, cold landscape where meaning and truth are as elusive as the waves themselves.
My advice to future readers is simple: don’t overthink it. Let the story wash over you like the tide. Don’t fight the ambiguity—trust Hunt to guide you through the gloom. By the end, you’ll feel a subtle, lasting sense of having been haunted by the ocean’s depths. 🌊🩶
September 15, 2014
Apparently, living out harsh lives in the small town leads to excessive alcohol-consumption and depression, and poor Jude is no exception to the rule. If you're not trying to escape reality by drinking, you have to immerse yourself in other pastimes. The girl's mother, who grew up on an island with mostly deaf people, loves contemplating in silence. The protagonist's grandfather enjoys perusing dictionaries and finding the origin of and connections between words. And in a way, both of them find safety and comfort in hoarding. The girl herself takes on jobs whenever work comes available and is obsessed about the sea, Jude, her mermaid nature, and her father who might come back from the sea and kill Jude.
Overall, I found this a difficult book to like. The young heroine of the story is just so detached from the world around her, displaced on "the dry land" as she calls it, to the point that I strongly suspected she had a psychological problem or an intellectual disability; Scientology does not equal science nor does drinking bath water turn you into a mermaid. Other reviews have claimed that she, unable to cope with the grief of losing her father, fashioned the mermaid-story so she could go on living. I, however, remain skeptical, and think more is amiss with her.
Her narrative weaves in and out of reality as we know it and made it hard for me to follow what was really happening. I think that this irked me the most: in my opinion this isn't fiction bordering on fantasy, this is fiction being indecisive about being either fantasy or a story about a girl who needs some serious psychological help. I am convinced I would have liked either of those better than the shape The Seas has been given now.
Finally, the blurb on the back of the book read "what she does to ease the pain of growing up lands her in prison" and "what she does to get out is the stuff of legends". Perhaps the way she experienced both events was a bit surreal, but what really happened was actually quite ordinary.
I'm sorry to say that this novel, professed to be magical and enchanting, failed to cast a spell on me.
Overall, I found this a difficult book to like. The young heroine of the story is just so detached from the world around her, displaced on "the dry land" as she calls it, to the point that I strongly suspected she had a psychological problem or an intellectual disability; Scientology does not equal science nor does drinking bath water turn you into a mermaid. Other reviews have claimed that she, unable to cope with the grief of losing her father, fashioned the mermaid-story so she could go on living. I, however, remain skeptical, and think more is amiss with her.
Her narrative weaves in and out of reality as we know it and made it hard for me to follow what was really happening. I think that this irked me the most: in my opinion this isn't fiction bordering on fantasy, this is fiction being indecisive about being either fantasy or a story about a girl who needs some serious psychological help. I am convinced I would have liked either of those better than the shape The Seas has been given now.
Finally, the blurb on the back of the book read "what she does to ease the pain of growing up lands her in prison" and "what she does to get out is the stuff of legends". Perhaps the way she experienced both events was a bit surreal, but what really happened was actually quite ordinary.
I'm sorry to say that this novel, professed to be magical and enchanting, failed to cast a spell on me.
December 3, 2021
Review soon - going back to sleep - but - WOW…
Powerful - dark and beautiful-
I’m Back:
This was my first time reading anything by Samantha Hunt.
At times her writing - and story - reminded me of “Freshwater” by Akwaeke Emezi —
But, only because I love both books; they both felt deeply experientially personal….and both books are not easily described in words.
Yet,
Samantha Hunt, has her very own unique style. I thought constantly about the messages Hunt most wanted to portray. I was interested!
I found this quote - written by Samantha Hunt….(I only read it five times)….as what she said fascinated me too:
“The idea of consumption fascinates me because in it there are threads of sex, pregnancy, motherhood, and being haunted by the dead. All the ways we take someone else’s body inside ours”.
Hunt says…
“Women’s stories are discounted because both women and stories are discounted. My narrator does not broker a difference between the felt and the physical. And nor do I. If I feel it, I can imagine it, it has truth. Stories and works of fiction made me into the physical person I am. So my writing considers hateful, narrow ideas of normalcy. Women are often described in terms of disease: pregnancy as illness, hysteria from uterus (hyster), the crazy women in the attic, etc.
My work tries to reset and reimagine these tropes as the norm, the start, the regular place of authority and acceptance. So, rather than unreliable, I think of my narrator as all-seeing, all-telling. Maybe she’s a bit of a shaman, wounded to let the truth pour out of her wound”.
I was totally enchanted with “The Seas”…..so I wanted to know more about Samantha Hunt herself. I’d love to share a lunch conversation with her — her mind and imagination is so alluring.
Sex, violence, death, independence, discernment, temptation, love, and life…..all seemed related ….representing their seductive prowess and adoration, in “The Seas”.
And…. As mermaids (or Sirens) reconcile with two opposite states of being: water dwelling and land dwelling… they often come to represent times of transformation or sacrifice in our lives.
This theme permeates throughout.
I’m a person who loves water, swimming, the ocean, [I’m leaving for Kauai in a couple of days]….so ‘The Seas’ resonated with my water-goddess-energy.
“The Seas” is mesmerizing—haunting—intriguing—oddly unique—[embodying the sacred feminine influenced by Mermaid Mythology]….
mysterious, magical, painful, and insightful.
Symbolically, Mermaids are seen as wise and uniquely in tune with the world around them.
I admired MERMAID (since she has no name, I’m referring to her as MERMAID for the purpose of writing this review).
I respected MERMAID’S fantasies. Her acute shrewdness and ability to notice things around her was to be commended.
MERMAID is nineteen years old…’wise-and-uniquely-in-tune-with-the-world-around-her’……equally and symbolically as mermaids are.
MERMAID meets an older man name Jude who is often very quiet. He has returned back home from the Iraq war. (home for a year-and-a-half)….a melancholy disposition.
MERMAID wants to CONSUME Jude….(literally and figuratively).
Feisty in nature, MERMAID is the dominant aggressor.
The writing is not just gorgeous….it’s penetrating with thought and feelings….allowing us to dance inside the story itself - befriend MERMAID - if we wish — and dance with our own life memories.
I felt like I was given permission to play — with my own childlike desires — I was taken back to my own teenage days — mud boarding in the ocean—hiding behind caves - kissing the boy I throbbed for - and baffling perplexing unknowns.
The main relationship in this tale is between MERMAID and Jude….
but the mother/daughter relationship was - to me - equally as powerful.
I related with both mother and daughter. I could have been either one of them.
I loved the experience— it will stay with me —
There many ways to interrupt this gritty, enigmatic story — and its ending….
I feel as if I need to read books like this more often —-it’s rare that I do.
But…something powerful reaches inside me …. hoping my own imagination is not dead —
I’ll be 70 years old next year — I’ve been asking myself - is it possible that I (little ordinary me- who basically is one of the most unskilled - untalented people I know)….might manifest something new that inspires me beyond my wildest dreams….late in life?
“The Seas” was aligned in my thoughts, wishes, and dreams…..
and somehow Samantha Hunt fell into my aura at a perfect time.
A few excerpts - always - out of context as not to leave any spoilers:
“Jude keeps his eyes shut. I take the opportunity to stare at him. His lips are very red. Tiny bits of skin are flaking off them. In the light creeping through the boardwalk cracks I see yellow deposits of wax in his ears. This wax intrigues me. It seems so adult, and all the things that make us different make me want him more”.
“My mother is regularly torn between being herself and being my mother. Her internal argument is sometimes visible from the outside, as if she had two heads sprouting from her one neck. The head thicker like sisters. One says, ‘Be sensible for your daughter sake’. The other head is reading a book about whether life exists outside our solar system”.
“Through the pipe, one night just before my father disappeared, I heard him tell my mother, ‘I remember how the moon shines into the ocean and the pattern it makes on the sea floor’. She didn’t say anything. ‘I want to go back there, he said, and the reason I remember that conversation is because my mother started crying when he said that and I had never heard her cry before”.
“I always thought the ocean is like a one-of-a-kind thing, like there is nothing else similar to it in the entire world and so the ocean feels no love, no mother, no father or husband, like a space alien. I always thought that just made it an extremely nasty and greedy thing, like an only child”.
Wonderful reading experience.
The Seas portrays female sexuality in ways I’ve never read before.
Powerful - dark and beautiful-
I’m Back:
This was my first time reading anything by Samantha Hunt.
At times her writing - and story - reminded me of “Freshwater” by Akwaeke Emezi —
But, only because I love both books; they both felt deeply experientially personal….and both books are not easily described in words.
Yet,
Samantha Hunt, has her very own unique style. I thought constantly about the messages Hunt most wanted to portray. I was interested!
I found this quote - written by Samantha Hunt….(I only read it five times)….as what she said fascinated me too:
“The idea of consumption fascinates me because in it there are threads of sex, pregnancy, motherhood, and being haunted by the dead. All the ways we take someone else’s body inside ours”.
Hunt says…
“Women’s stories are discounted because both women and stories are discounted. My narrator does not broker a difference between the felt and the physical. And nor do I. If I feel it, I can imagine it, it has truth. Stories and works of fiction made me into the physical person I am. So my writing considers hateful, narrow ideas of normalcy. Women are often described in terms of disease: pregnancy as illness, hysteria from uterus (hyster), the crazy women in the attic, etc.
My work tries to reset and reimagine these tropes as the norm, the start, the regular place of authority and acceptance. So, rather than unreliable, I think of my narrator as all-seeing, all-telling. Maybe she’s a bit of a shaman, wounded to let the truth pour out of her wound”.
I was totally enchanted with “The Seas”…..so I wanted to know more about Samantha Hunt herself. I’d love to share a lunch conversation with her — her mind and imagination is so alluring.
Sex, violence, death, independence, discernment, temptation, love, and life…..all seemed related ….representing their seductive prowess and adoration, in “The Seas”.
And…. As mermaids (or Sirens) reconcile with two opposite states of being: water dwelling and land dwelling… they often come to represent times of transformation or sacrifice in our lives.
This theme permeates throughout.
I’m a person who loves water, swimming, the ocean, [I’m leaving for Kauai in a couple of days]….so ‘The Seas’ resonated with my water-goddess-energy.
“The Seas” is mesmerizing—haunting—intriguing—oddly unique—[embodying the sacred feminine influenced by Mermaid Mythology]….
mysterious, magical, painful, and insightful.
Symbolically, Mermaids are seen as wise and uniquely in tune with the world around them.
I admired MERMAID (since she has no name, I’m referring to her as MERMAID for the purpose of writing this review).
I respected MERMAID’S fantasies. Her acute shrewdness and ability to notice things around her was to be commended.
MERMAID is nineteen years old…’wise-and-uniquely-in-tune-with-the-world-around-her’……equally and symbolically as mermaids are.
MERMAID meets an older man name Jude who is often very quiet. He has returned back home from the Iraq war. (home for a year-and-a-half)….a melancholy disposition.
MERMAID wants to CONSUME Jude….(literally and figuratively).
Feisty in nature, MERMAID is the dominant aggressor.
The writing is not just gorgeous….it’s penetrating with thought and feelings….allowing us to dance inside the story itself - befriend MERMAID - if we wish — and dance with our own life memories.
I felt like I was given permission to play — with my own childlike desires — I was taken back to my own teenage days — mud boarding in the ocean—hiding behind caves - kissing the boy I throbbed for - and baffling perplexing unknowns.
The main relationship in this tale is between MERMAID and Jude….
but the mother/daughter relationship was - to me - equally as powerful.
I related with both mother and daughter. I could have been either one of them.
I loved the experience— it will stay with me —
There many ways to interrupt this gritty, enigmatic story — and its ending….
I feel as if I need to read books like this more often —-it’s rare that I do.
But…something powerful reaches inside me …. hoping my own imagination is not dead —
I’ll be 70 years old next year — I’ve been asking myself - is it possible that I (little ordinary me- who basically is one of the most unskilled - untalented people I know)….might manifest something new that inspires me beyond my wildest dreams….late in life?
“The Seas” was aligned in my thoughts, wishes, and dreams…..
and somehow Samantha Hunt fell into my aura at a perfect time.
A few excerpts - always - out of context as not to leave any spoilers:
“Jude keeps his eyes shut. I take the opportunity to stare at him. His lips are very red. Tiny bits of skin are flaking off them. In the light creeping through the boardwalk cracks I see yellow deposits of wax in his ears. This wax intrigues me. It seems so adult, and all the things that make us different make me want him more”.
“My mother is regularly torn between being herself and being my mother. Her internal argument is sometimes visible from the outside, as if she had two heads sprouting from her one neck. The head thicker like sisters. One says, ‘Be sensible for your daughter sake’. The other head is reading a book about whether life exists outside our solar system”.
“Through the pipe, one night just before my father disappeared, I heard him tell my mother, ‘I remember how the moon shines into the ocean and the pattern it makes on the sea floor’. She didn’t say anything. ‘I want to go back there, he said, and the reason I remember that conversation is because my mother started crying when he said that and I had never heard her cry before”.
“I always thought the ocean is like a one-of-a-kind thing, like there is nothing else similar to it in the entire world and so the ocean feels no love, no mother, no father or husband, like a space alien. I always thought that just made it an extremely nasty and greedy thing, like an only child”.
Wonderful reading experience.
The Seas portrays female sexuality in ways I’ve never read before.
July 28, 2024
"The ocean is full of everything except mercy."
The nameless protagonist of Samantha Hunt's The Seas lives in a cold town surrounded by cold water and populated by cold people. Our MC considers herself the outcast of the town, although it's hard to say for sure how much of a misfit she actually is, since the scope of this short novella is very small and focuses on a very limited number of characters. This includes the mother and grandfather with whom she lives and the object of her obsessive love, Jude, an Iraq War veteran 14 years her senior, who is suffering from PTSD. Another character that looms large in the story is the MC's father, who walked into the sea and disappeared when she was eight-years old, but not before convincing her that she is, in fact, a mermaid.
This is an odd and beautifully written story full of longing and loneliness, exploring the vastness of the ocean as well as the distances between damaged people. I listened to this on audio since that was the option available to me, and the narration by Hunt is very good, but I think the story may have been better served by reading a physical copy. I do plan to pick one up and reread it eventually, and wouldn't be surprised if my rating went up. The writing and themes reminded me a bit of Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea, so I think readers who enjoyed that book might like this as well.
The nameless protagonist of Samantha Hunt's The Seas lives in a cold town surrounded by cold water and populated by cold people. Our MC considers herself the outcast of the town, although it's hard to say for sure how much of a misfit she actually is, since the scope of this short novella is very small and focuses on a very limited number of characters. This includes the mother and grandfather with whom she lives and the object of her obsessive love, Jude, an Iraq War veteran 14 years her senior, who is suffering from PTSD. Another character that looms large in the story is the MC's father, who walked into the sea and disappeared when she was eight-years old, but not before convincing her that she is, in fact, a mermaid.
This is an odd and beautifully written story full of longing and loneliness, exploring the vastness of the ocean as well as the distances between damaged people. I listened to this on audio since that was the option available to me, and the narration by Hunt is very good, but I think the story may have been better served by reading a physical copy. I do plan to pick one up and reread it eventually, and wouldn't be surprised if my rating went up. The writing and themes reminded me a bit of Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea, so I think readers who enjoyed that book might like this as well.
June 15, 2020
4.8*
Let me tell you my story. When I was 9-10 years old, I was not a mermaid, no...I was a wind whisperer. Oh yes, I was. Every morning I was running out from the house to say good morning to the wind, because the wind was waiting for me there, all ready to play. I strongly believed that we had a special connection, that nobody knows and nobody understands. I would tell the wind about my day, my school and piano lessons, which I hated. The only good thing about those piano lessons was that there was a big and desert area behind the musical school, where the wind was so strong, it was hurling like mad and circling the dry leaves and that's where we would talk for an hour or so. I loved my wind, I cared for it and it did the same. I knew who I was, I was not like other kids, I was a wind whisperer. Was I insane? Of course not.
The point is that this book was not about insanity. You can be a mermaid or a nymph or whatever your nature tells you. And it is so beautiful to be part of a bigger and more powerful world, even if for others you are walking on the edge of insanity. This novel was beautiful, the ending was massively mind-boggling, the sea was adamant, the love was destructive.
Let me tell you my story. When I was 9-10 years old, I was not a mermaid, no...I was a wind whisperer. Oh yes, I was. Every morning I was running out from the house to say good morning to the wind, because the wind was waiting for me there, all ready to play. I strongly believed that we had a special connection, that nobody knows and nobody understands. I would tell the wind about my day, my school and piano lessons, which I hated. The only good thing about those piano lessons was that there was a big and desert area behind the musical school, where the wind was so strong, it was hurling like mad and circling the dry leaves and that's where we would talk for an hour or so. I loved my wind, I cared for it and it did the same. I knew who I was, I was not like other kids, I was a wind whisperer. Was I insane? Of course not.
The point is that this book was not about insanity. You can be a mermaid or a nymph or whatever your nature tells you. And it is so beautiful to be part of a bigger and more powerful world, even if for others you are walking on the edge of insanity. This novel was beautiful, the ending was massively mind-boggling, the sea was adamant, the love was destructive.
November 7, 2018
Actual Rating: 3.5 stars
”If one word can mean so many things at the same time, than I don’t see why I can’t”
Magical realism with a focus on the ocean. A cold coastal town, inhabited by damaged people. A girl who flees from her grief in the belief that she is a mermaid.
This book, thematically, should have been an easy sell for me. The premise sounded right up my alley, the cover is one of the most beautiful ones I’ve seen in a long time and all in all this novel has a level of “strangeness” surrounding it, that has the effect of a sirencall on me.
Strange however, was also the feeling I was left with after finishing this novel. I enjoyed many of the individual elements of the novel, but as a whole, there was a level of incoherence that prevented me from immersing myself fully.
The setting is atmospheric and definitely carries the feeling of isolation and “displacement” that it’s going for, yet it didn’t feel like a real place to me. There is quite little description of the place, and what there was felt too dry to invoke much imagery in my mind. While not a problem on its own, for a genre like magical realism that relies heavily on atmosphere, I would have liked to see more of this.
The characters are interesting on their own as well. Our protagonist is very much an unreliable narrator, with a murky mind an damaged heart. She lost her father to the seas and has since then been drawn to the water, feeling displaced in her current place in the world. The one thing that seems to bind her to the land is her love for an equally damaged war-veteran, over 10 years her senior, who is reluctant to requite her love.
It’s part fairytale, part very real tragedy. Despite how beautiful it was in theory, it missed the emotional mark for me. I didn’t feel it, so to speak.
Disconnect plays a big part in the narrative and themes of this story, yet it’s also the feeling that prevented me from enjoying it to the fullest. I felt disconnected from the story, and the story-elements felt disconnected from another. As is often the case with debuts, the author has a lot of talent, and a lot of great ideas, yet isn’t experienced enough to tie it all together technically. I have to say: I hate criticizing it for this reason. The novel is clearly very emotional, and written with great passion by the author, but it was the technical flaws that prevented it from converting that emotion to me.
The Seas is still very much worth a read in my opinion, but for a book with the potential of being a new favorite, and being a Orange-prize nominee, I can’t help but feel a little let down.
”If one word can mean so many things at the same time, than I don’t see why I can’t”
Magical realism with a focus on the ocean. A cold coastal town, inhabited by damaged people. A girl who flees from her grief in the belief that she is a mermaid.
This book, thematically, should have been an easy sell for me. The premise sounded right up my alley, the cover is one of the most beautiful ones I’ve seen in a long time and all in all this novel has a level of “strangeness” surrounding it, that has the effect of a sirencall on me.
Strange however, was also the feeling I was left with after finishing this novel. I enjoyed many of the individual elements of the novel, but as a whole, there was a level of incoherence that prevented me from immersing myself fully.
The setting is atmospheric and definitely carries the feeling of isolation and “displacement” that it’s going for, yet it didn’t feel like a real place to me. There is quite little description of the place, and what there was felt too dry to invoke much imagery in my mind. While not a problem on its own, for a genre like magical realism that relies heavily on atmosphere, I would have liked to see more of this.
The characters are interesting on their own as well. Our protagonist is very much an unreliable narrator, with a murky mind an damaged heart. She lost her father to the seas and has since then been drawn to the water, feeling displaced in her current place in the world. The one thing that seems to bind her to the land is her love for an equally damaged war-veteran, over 10 years her senior, who is reluctant to requite her love.
It’s part fairytale, part very real tragedy. Despite how beautiful it was in theory, it missed the emotional mark for me. I didn’t feel it, so to speak.
Disconnect plays a big part in the narrative and themes of this story, yet it’s also the feeling that prevented me from enjoying it to the fullest. I felt disconnected from the story, and the story-elements felt disconnected from another. As is often the case with debuts, the author has a lot of talent, and a lot of great ideas, yet isn’t experienced enough to tie it all together technically. I have to say: I hate criticizing it for this reason. The novel is clearly very emotional, and written with great passion by the author, but it was the technical flaws that prevented it from converting that emotion to me.
The Seas is still very much worth a read in my opinion, but for a book with the potential of being a new favorite, and being a Orange-prize nominee, I can’t help but feel a little let down.
December 2, 2016
What is it that makes a book work? Fall apart?
The Seas captured a first person narrative voice of a young woman, sensitive and imaginative, whose voice soared. Abandoned in a wintry deaden northern town, her father walked into the sea. Didn’t return. What she knows is what her mother knows, they cannot leave until her father returns. They must wait. She is obsessed with a man fourteen years older than her who remains a companion but does not return the girl-woman’s passion. All others mock her for her estrangement creating further estrangement. I loved the debut novel’s lack of polish with its crags and occasional jagged edge. So difficult to close the covers.
There are times that readers are called away from books no matter what the zen discipline, by bodily needs not screaming but with a curt authority making its unwavered demands known.
Inserting the blue book marker in its place, laying the book on the table next to my chair I patted the cover and vanished. Moments later I returned to my chair and opened the book. What? Who…Who took over the writing? The dog? She’s still sleeping on the couch. Besides, she only like translations. Same book, same author, same book marker and page, oh so near the much anticipated end.
The ending ties everything together. Peeking under the chair I couldn’t find the neat package. All of the suspenseful sentences, driving the narrative forward was nothing but a lame story strung together to reach this pallid end. Sure there was disappointment after so much promise but what was glaringly there was anger. I felt I had been used, played, and yeah I felt foolish. A set up. A set up in reverse where a flourish of brilliant color is swathed across the canvas only to lead to the surprise of a letdown. In the end a wonderfully written style in a poorly written book.
Hey, it’s a debut novel. Hunt can write. My hope is that she moves or has moved past this amateurish flaw and sees the need to pour her soaring style into a well honed overall structure.
The Seas captured a first person narrative voice of a young woman, sensitive and imaginative, whose voice soared. Abandoned in a wintry deaden northern town, her father walked into the sea. Didn’t return. What she knows is what her mother knows, they cannot leave until her father returns. They must wait. She is obsessed with a man fourteen years older than her who remains a companion but does not return the girl-woman’s passion. All others mock her for her estrangement creating further estrangement. I loved the debut novel’s lack of polish with its crags and occasional jagged edge. So difficult to close the covers.
There are times that readers are called away from books no matter what the zen discipline, by bodily needs not screaming but with a curt authority making its unwavered demands known.
Inserting the blue book marker in its place, laying the book on the table next to my chair I patted the cover and vanished. Moments later I returned to my chair and opened the book. What? Who…Who took over the writing? The dog? She’s still sleeping on the couch. Besides, she only like translations. Same book, same author, same book marker and page, oh so near the much anticipated end.
The ending ties everything together. Peeking under the chair I couldn’t find the neat package. All of the suspenseful sentences, driving the narrative forward was nothing but a lame story strung together to reach this pallid end. Sure there was disappointment after so much promise but what was glaringly there was anger. I felt I had been used, played, and yeah I felt foolish. A set up. A set up in reverse where a flourish of brilliant color is swathed across the canvas only to lead to the surprise of a letdown. In the end a wonderfully written style in a poorly written book.
Hey, it’s a debut novel. Hunt can write. My hope is that she moves or has moved past this amateurish flaw and sees the need to pour her soaring style into a well honed overall structure.
Read
December 30, 2024whoever did the covers for this going to hell. amazing stuff
March 22, 2011
So here is what I thought when I finished this book:
1. Samantha Hunt is prodigiously talented and I am very much looking forward to seeing what she does next.
2. This is not actually a very good novel.
There's some really good stuff here and some really choppy, disconnected stuff. I believe this is the first book that Hunt wrote and it shows. There's some good writing here and Hunt shows a lot of promise, but I'm not sure what it's doing on the Orange longlist. I can't believe this is one of the twenty best books by a woman published during the eligibility period.
1. Samantha Hunt is prodigiously talented and I am very much looking forward to seeing what she does next.
2. This is not actually a very good novel.
There's some really good stuff here and some really choppy, disconnected stuff. I believe this is the first book that Hunt wrote and it shows. There's some good writing here and Hunt shows a lot of promise, but I'm not sure what it's doing on the Orange longlist. I can't believe this is one of the twenty best books by a woman published during the eligibility period.
September 21, 2018
5+ out of 5.
Magical. One of those books that you want to hold onto every single word of, that sends an electric pulse across your brain when you start reading it. Don't get me wrong: this book is sad, it's bleak, it's even tragic... but it's also hopeful, joyful, even a little silly at times. And god is it full of magic, the best kind of magic.
Magical. One of those books that you want to hold onto every single word of, that sends an electric pulse across your brain when you start reading it. Don't get me wrong: this book is sad, it's bleak, it's even tragic... but it's also hopeful, joyful, even a little silly at times. And god is it full of magic, the best kind of magic.
March 30, 2011
A strange one this.
A debut novel longlisted for the Orange Prize two years after its author’s second novel was longlisted for the very same prize. There is no question over the books eligibility as it was first published in the United Kindom in July last year, but it does feel odd.
And the book itself has a certain strangeness.
“One night,” I begin and close my eyes, “my father, he was very handsome, he walked into the ocean. That was eleven years ago. He hasn’t come back though and even though the police found the place on the beach where my father’s footprints disappeared into the water they never found his body. So my mother and I have been waiting. We often sit and wait on the beach just where my father’s footprints disappeared into the water. Sometimes I wait alone. We always thought he would return…”
The unnamed narrator lives with her mother and her grandfather in a seaside town. A bleak seaside town set against steep cliffs. A town that feels like a prison.
She’s still at school, dreaming of becoming a scientist and making a little pocket-money as a chambermaid. And she loves, to the point of obsession, a sailor nearly twice her age, Jude. She loved him before he left for Iraq, she waited, and she still loved him now that he has returned with Post Traumatic Stress. Jude is a down at heel, womanizing alcoholic, but he still keeps her close. But not too close.
At home her mother waits for her husband, still married in both heart and head. And her grandfather, her mother’s father, a retired typesetter, spends his days planning and typesetting dictionaries that will never be published, and filling his granddaughter’s head with wonderful words
And the girl, whose departed father told her that she was a gift from the sea is drawn to the water.
I’d lie down in the tub instead of my bed. At first my mother would wake me up and make me move back into my bed but after years and years she finally gave up and let me sleep there. I liked it in the tub because from the window I could see the stars and the ocean and sometimes, if it was calm, I could see the stars in the ocean. I liked the tub. If I slept with my ear against the drainpipe I could hear my parents’ conversations at night, long metallic talking that made its way up through the plumbing.
Samantha Hunt presents all of this beautifully. Her prose is light, lyrical, idiosyncratic and quite wonderfully awash with watery imagery. The melancholy of the isolated seaside town is tangible. Her characters are lightly and perfectly drawn and each one – from the lonely girl believes she will become a mermaid to the troubled veteran who can’t find his place in his hometown – has their own distinctive voice, their own role to play.
As obsessive love and the call of the ocean push the gentle storyline to a dramatic turn. It pulls all of the strands of the story together very, very cleverly, but for me the writing lost something at that point, and the magic never quite came back as the story rushed to an ending that I didn’t think quite worked.
There is considerable magic in the pages of this little book, wonderful ideas, wonderful emotions. It’s just that Samantha Hunt couldn’t quite pull off everything at the same time, couldn’t quite see things through to the end.
But such potential … maybe one day …
A debut novel longlisted for the Orange Prize two years after its author’s second novel was longlisted for the very same prize. There is no question over the books eligibility as it was first published in the United Kindom in July last year, but it does feel odd.
And the book itself has a certain strangeness.
“One night,” I begin and close my eyes, “my father, he was very handsome, he walked into the ocean. That was eleven years ago. He hasn’t come back though and even though the police found the place on the beach where my father’s footprints disappeared into the water they never found his body. So my mother and I have been waiting. We often sit and wait on the beach just where my father’s footprints disappeared into the water. Sometimes I wait alone. We always thought he would return…”
The unnamed narrator lives with her mother and her grandfather in a seaside town. A bleak seaside town set against steep cliffs. A town that feels like a prison.
She’s still at school, dreaming of becoming a scientist and making a little pocket-money as a chambermaid. And she loves, to the point of obsession, a sailor nearly twice her age, Jude. She loved him before he left for Iraq, she waited, and she still loved him now that he has returned with Post Traumatic Stress. Jude is a down at heel, womanizing alcoholic, but he still keeps her close. But not too close.
At home her mother waits for her husband, still married in both heart and head. And her grandfather, her mother’s father, a retired typesetter, spends his days planning and typesetting dictionaries that will never be published, and filling his granddaughter’s head with wonderful words
And the girl, whose departed father told her that she was a gift from the sea is drawn to the water.
I’d lie down in the tub instead of my bed. At first my mother would wake me up and make me move back into my bed but after years and years she finally gave up and let me sleep there. I liked it in the tub because from the window I could see the stars and the ocean and sometimes, if it was calm, I could see the stars in the ocean. I liked the tub. If I slept with my ear against the drainpipe I could hear my parents’ conversations at night, long metallic talking that made its way up through the plumbing.
Samantha Hunt presents all of this beautifully. Her prose is light, lyrical, idiosyncratic and quite wonderfully awash with watery imagery. The melancholy of the isolated seaside town is tangible. Her characters are lightly and perfectly drawn and each one – from the lonely girl believes she will become a mermaid to the troubled veteran who can’t find his place in his hometown – has their own distinctive voice, their own role to play.
As obsessive love and the call of the ocean push the gentle storyline to a dramatic turn. It pulls all of the strands of the story together very, very cleverly, but for me the writing lost something at that point, and the magic never quite came back as the story rushed to an ending that I didn’t think quite worked.
There is considerable magic in the pages of this little book, wonderful ideas, wonderful emotions. It’s just that Samantha Hunt couldn’t quite pull off everything at the same time, couldn’t quite see things through to the end.
But such potential … maybe one day …
May 28, 2021
Lyrical, sometimes beautiful writing that wants you to wonder if the narrator is actually mermaid or sinking into madness. The chapters sometimes feel like loosely hung-together essays and while the New Yorker claims the writing is unaffected, I’d say that’s about 90% true. It read like the prose was getting away from the author now and then but mostly I enjoyed it. I was in the right, depressive, contemplative mood for it. YMMV.
August 19, 2023
There is a lot of this kind of sadness here. It slips in like the fog at night. The fog that creeps out of the ocean to survey the land that one day she thinks will eventually be hers.
▴▴▴
lyrical writing, packed with cerebral metaphors and strange asides from our unreliable narrator, eventually turns into a magical fever dream.
i love the vibes, especially in the first half. it's like a stunted fairytale, with a protagonist who knows she and her (possibly deceased, possibly returned to the sea) father are both mermaids. she gives vivid descriptions of her rainy northern coastal town, filled with alcoholics and people who feel otherwise suffocated by their sadness or their setting.
the writing is extremely clever, very concerned with language, as the protagonist's grandfather is an etymology-obsessed typesetter who lives in his own world of words. and as for the title of the novel, the seas sounds just like the seize, which happens to be the title of one chapter toward the end.
much of the book is concerned with jude, the recent iraq war veteran whom our protagonist pines for. her deep obsessive longing is tangible; she adores him to the point of wanting to consume him.
toward the end we take a turn. the vague magical realism amps up into the surreal and unbelievable, thick with metaphors and far from reality. much is left unresolved.
it's no surprise that melissa broder has a five star review posted here, as i can see common threads between the seas and the pisces. next-level romantic obsession, a relatably unhinged narrator, otherworldly oceanic magic.
Those are the choices for women who live here. Dirty. Domesticated. Deaf. Deformed. Slithery. Siren. Psychotic. Silent.
December 28, 2020
When I first started reading this book, it kind of creeped me out. But I stuck with it and ended up loving it. It’s such an odd tale but is told in the most beautiful way. I love how the lines of what is real and what is imagination or hallucination, are blurred. It gives the story a sense of magic, almost like a fairytale. My favorite part of the book was how it was almost like modern mermaid folklore from the narrator’s point of view. She was a real mermaid and if she didn’t marry Jude, a mortal, he would die. And he did. The ending reveals that he killed himself, but you like believing that he melted better. Because you want the haunting myths to be true, and I really wanted to believe that the narrator is a mermaid that belongs to the sea.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 26, 2025
good god, how have I been sleeping on Samantha Hunt all these years? Are you guys reading this? Why hasn't anyone told me to read this?!?
Oh my heart. It is wrenched. This book is everything - magical, mystical, haunted, grief drenched...
Fuuuuuck. THIS is what a mermaid story should look like. It gets all the stars.
Oh my heart. It is wrenched. This book is everything - magical, mystical, haunted, grief drenched...
Fuuuuuck. THIS is what a mermaid story should look like. It gets all the stars.
January 7, 2020
Wait! What?
...
I need a paperback of this book. Audio was great, no words, but I know, I really know, it will have a five star rating for a hardcopy!!!
Now it's 4.5.
@Sosi sorry, I couldn't wait and finished it today 😊
...
I need a paperback of this book. Audio was great, no words, but I know, I really know, it will have a five star rating for a hardcopy!!!
Now it's 4.5.
@Sosi sorry, I couldn't wait and finished it today 😊
November 24, 2018
A hard one to rate, but quite magical. Samantha Hunt has cemented herself as one of my favorite contemporary authors.
October 2, 2018
This strange little novel dips into magical realism and allegory to convey the protagonist’s coming of age.
The unnamed narrator is an awkward and isolated teenager convinced that she’s a mermaid. Eleven years ago, her father walked into the sea in their small coastal town and never returned. Presently, she’s in (unrequited) love with a man much older than her who just returned from the Iraq War with PTSD.
The Seas is about the stories we tell to establish a sense of identity and carve out a narrative for ourselves. It’s likely that the narrator is in fact insane, but she tells her story with utmost conviction, her only way of making sense of the world around her.
Hunt’s writing is fluid and evocative, certainly some of the more interesting prose I’ve encountered recently. I found myself struggling with the story at first, and then finally found my rhythm in the second half during the buildup and aftermath of the striking climax.
The unnamed narrator is an awkward and isolated teenager convinced that she’s a mermaid. Eleven years ago, her father walked into the sea in their small coastal town and never returned. Presently, she’s in (unrequited) love with a man much older than her who just returned from the Iraq War with PTSD.
The Seas is about the stories we tell to establish a sense of identity and carve out a narrative for ourselves. It’s likely that the narrator is in fact insane, but she tells her story with utmost conviction, her only way of making sense of the world around her.
Hunt’s writing is fluid and evocative, certainly some of the more interesting prose I’ve encountered recently. I found myself struggling with the story at first, and then finally found my rhythm in the second half during the buildup and aftermath of the striking climax.
September 2, 2011
I really liked this novel. Short and existential, and constantly questioning its reality. There are not too many "mainstream" novels in which the heroine has to push a beached King Neptune back in to the sea. The perceptual problems of the young protagonist are very alluring. I really believed she was turning into a mermaid. It's the only thing that made everything make sense.
July 31, 2018
I don’t know what to say other than this book ripped into my core and spilled everything out.
January 23, 2021
2.5*
What a peculiar story. I expected it to be some kind of retelling of the little mermais, but it was totally different. Sometimes I even thought the MC had mental problems, because of her weird actions.
So I can't decide if I liked or hated this book.
What a peculiar story. I expected it to be some kind of retelling of the little mermais, but it was totally different. Sometimes I even thought the MC had mental problems, because of her weird actions.
So I can't decide if I liked or hated this book.
September 26, 2024
i have such muddled thoughts but wow. this is some girls vomitting blood and bile strewn with words when first in love type of shit. her mind spills forth and becomes the world: narrative woven into gossamer, aqueous realities. narrative ruptures, wiggling on flesh. language becomes an elemental force. towards the end, the striking preciseness/concreteness of the girl, despite everything, forced me to let go of the whole "trauma, therefore gradual psychotic weathering as defence mechanism" reading. of course it's that but it's also like she said: "words are molecules...you just choose what scale you want to see the world." rescue conduits are fashioned out of word-ropes.
I also read my boyfriend into this.
I also read my boyfriend into this.
July 9, 2024
Heartbreaking, and interesting.
July 21, 2024
Obsessed
April 17, 2019
This is an astonishing, twisted take on the little mermaid tale with an unnamed and very unreliable narrator. In language that is sometimes sharp and sometimes lyrical Hunt tells the story of a 19-year-old girl in a nowhere seaside town who’s father before disappearing into the sea told her she was a mermaid. And as mermaids frequently do she falls into an obsessive love with a sailor, this one a drunken damaged a rock war vet 13 years her senior. Though set in a particular time this book feels very much like a fairytale, despite its contemporary details both the language and the fact that the narrator is so deeply untrustworthy, we are never quite sure of her sanity, make it feel like a very dark fable. And hunts treatment of her characters, all dealing with some form of loss weather of fathers, husbands, or faith in the system, many struggling with some form of mental illness, as complex and thoughtful individuals made this book a joy to read.
April 29, 2019
Apparently this is yet another book where I just don’t understand the hype. It makes me almost wonder if I’m reading the same book as the people giving it four and five stars.
I found this book at an indie bookstore in Mystic, CT, and it sounded like something I would absolutely adore. I requested it from the library, and finally got to it this weekend. I can see that Hunt can definitely write; there are lots of lyrical and beautiful passages. But the book itself is just... there. It begins with little preamble and then simply ends, and what’s in between is a ramble of confusion. I’m all for a beautifully written book, but it needs some sort of plot, a way to move the reader through the story and not just though continuing to turn pages.
It’s very possible that I just don’t *get* it, but I would be hard pressed to recommend this book.
I found this book at an indie bookstore in Mystic, CT, and it sounded like something I would absolutely adore. I requested it from the library, and finally got to it this weekend. I can see that Hunt can definitely write; there are lots of lyrical and beautiful passages. But the book itself is just... there. It begins with little preamble and then simply ends, and what’s in between is a ramble of confusion. I’m all for a beautifully written book, but it needs some sort of plot, a way to move the reader through the story and not just though continuing to turn pages.
It’s very possible that I just don’t *get* it, but I would be hard pressed to recommend this book.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,493 reviews