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The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: Stories
Bewitching and playful, with its feet only slightly tethered to the world we know, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover explores hope, love, and loss across a series of surreal landscapes and wild metamorphoses. Just because Jenny was born without a head doesn't mean she isn't still annoying to her older brother, and just because the Man of the Future's carefully planned extramarital affair ends in alien abduction and network fame doesn't mean he can't still pine for his absent wife. Romping through the fantastic with big-hearted ease, these stories cut to the core of what it means to navigate family, faith, and longing, whether in the form of a lovesick kraken slowly dragging a ship of sailors into the sea, a small town euthanizing its grandfathers in a time-honored ritual, or a third-grade field trip learning that time travel is even more wondrous--and more perilous--than they might imagine.
Andreasen's stories are simultaneously daring and deeply familiar, unfolding in wildly inventive worlds that convey our common yearning for connection and understanding. With a captivating new voice from an incredible author, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover uses the supernatural and extraordinary to expose us at our most human.
Our fathers at sea --
Bodies in space --
The sea beast takes a lover --
The king's teacup at rest --
He is the rainstorm and the sandstorm, hallelujah, hallelujah --
Rockabye, Rocketboy --
The saints in the parlor --
Andy, lord of ruin --
Jenny --
Rite of baptism --
Blunderbuss
Andreasen's stories are simultaneously daring and deeply familiar, unfolding in wildly inventive worlds that convey our common yearning for connection and understanding. With a captivating new voice from an incredible author, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover uses the supernatural and extraordinary to expose us at our most human.
Our fathers at sea --
Bodies in space --
The sea beast takes a lover --
The king's teacup at rest --
He is the rainstorm and the sandstorm, hallelujah, hallelujah --
Rockabye, Rocketboy --
The saints in the parlor --
Andy, lord of ruin --
Jenny --
Rite of baptism --
Blunderbuss
227 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2018
53 people are currently reading
1633 people want to read
About the author
Michael Andreasen
4 books28 followersMichael Andreasen holds a Masters degree in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Tin House, Zoetrope: All-Story, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. He lives in Southern California. His first book, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover, was published in the US by Dutton Books in February 2018 and will be published in the UK by the Head of Zeus in March 2018.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 198 reviews
July 22, 2020
'Our Fathers at Sea' is a vicious atrocity! Unchristian (and unConfucian! and unDao! and unWicca! and unBuddhist! and... yeah, overall unspiritual!) and plain scary. It damaged for me the enjoyment of this book altogether. Then, most of the other stories were barely comprehensible, so this might have been for the best. At least the 1st story made me think on some difficult subjects.
Our society tends to consist of individuals who are at their most vulnerable at the beginning and the end of our lifetimes. The idea to protect each other at our weakest is not new. It has been mulled over by many and still hasn't been resolved satisfactorily. Which is why we often hear of old people dying of neglect or alone or from easily preventable mishaps or illnesses. We hear of it, we empathise and we do nothing. Nothing worthy of mention, in most cases. We are too busy or are not qualified or have other issues or... whatever.
This story managed to drag casually into discussion a dystopian 'solution' of these issues: we get a society where old people are thrown away like trash! Even this process is called 'crating'! For one thing, I do realise the author probably thought it a good idea to make a poignant illustration of the fact that our society is sort of ill. We try to do our best and still we often fail at it miserably. We cannot develop a consistent view on euthanasia, on who should care for the terminally ill or the mature people. We believe that age is something to be ashamed of. We do it both ways: our children hurry to grow up to become adults scared of the time's passage. For us, the time is not a bringer of maturity but rather a foreboding of the end of our days. Our standards of beauty, health, living, style, you name it - everything is aimed at staying frozen at some point in time. This is not a healthy way to live, as a society or a person. And still, this is what's going on.
Personally, I dislike the casual approach. I don't like the light-handed touch where we can glimpse at this horror in a casual way. One willing to do just that, shoud remember 2 things:
- Cautionary tales have the distressing tendency to cross the line and go on to becoming the new know-how manuals. Just remember the '1984' and 'Brave New World'. Find any similarities to anything, anywhere?
- The Overton window is still open. Things we keep discussing casually might turn out to become the things our grandchildren do casually. We wouldn't want to wake up, one day, in a world where the new norm is to kill off the old people as soon as they become 'too much bother', would we? Even if the killing off would go with nice bells and whistles:
Q:
“And don’t forget the pressure-resistant window,” the son adds. “You’ll be able to see those dolphins nice and clear. How about that, Dad? Dolphins all the way down, keeping you company.” (c)
I don't know how to rate it. Therefore, let's count:
* The writing is cool, clear and readable, in the 1st story. +5 stars
* The storybook is diverse and touches many topics. +1 star
* 'Our Fathers at Sea' is very thought-inducing. +1 star
* The subject of 'Our Fathers at Sea' is beyond unsettling and way too light-hearted for such serious a subject. -1 star
* 'Bodies in Space' - totally uninteresting. It probably was supposed to be innovative and clever. And it wasn't. Instead it was a rambling mix of space, breasts/amoebas (!), flirting, a blinking diode in one's head, techs, blogging, brands (Volvo?), Man/Woman of the Future... A salad of weird stuff. -1 star
* Masturbation session in 'Bodies in Space' - pointless. -1 star
* The Sea Beast Takes a Lover' - the best thing about this story is the heading. The ending was inconclusive. What was that with the refugee? What was that with the miniboat and minimonster? The crew? Did they die? Could we have skipped all this drama and just put it all in a 1-liner 'Everyone died'? -1 star
* 'The King's Teacup at Rest' Didn't get it. -1 star
* 'He Is the Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah, Hallelujah' Didn't like it. -1 star
* 'Rockabye, Rocketboy' Ouch! 'Plug detective'?? Euphemism for (robo)porn? The Rocketboy demise? -2 stars
* The Saints in the Parlor' Blasphemous? For what? -1 star
* 'Andy, Lord of Ruin' Stupid, didn't care about it -1 star
* 'Jenny' Uh? Was it written for shock value? +1 star for writing, idea & structure -1 star for everything else
* 'Rite of Baptism' Unreadable. -1 star
* 'Blunderbuss' Time travel story. +1 star for readability
This should have a total of - (minus!) 3 stars! Since there is no such rating here, this is going to be rated at 1 star, which is rather generous, I think.
Q: The night before we load you into the crate and watch as the helicopter carries you off to the undisclosed location to drop you into the Atlantic Ocean, we eat dinner as a family. (c)
Q:
Just follow your heart. (c)
Q:
I remember once, not long after we crated Mom, we took you and the kids down to Ainsdale... (c)
Q:
It’s our lake, yours and mine, and now mine and my sons’. For all the fighting, all the hurt feelings, the years of not talking even before you lost the ability to speak, we still end up here, you and I, looking at a lake full of stars. (c)
Q:
You showed me how controlling the water level prevented them from maturing into frogs, and how nice it was to keep tadpoles as they were, blindly swimming around until they died and we replaced them with new ones. (c) This reads ominous.
Q:
“Daddy’s gone,” she says, and I feel the relief whistle out of me like an untied balloon. You’re gone. I don’t have to crate you. I’m so happy I dive into the lake, where the dream lets me breathe freely, the warm water hugging me close until I wake up. (c)
Q:
I remember one of the clowns made me a balloon giraffe, and your father asked, like some do, not to be taken, to be held over till the following year. Next year, he promised, he’d be ready. I don’t remember what you did, if you wept or tried to argue with him, or if you simply stood by like I am now. I remember that he had the good sense to ask only once, but even that small moment of pleading caught me off guard, and I couldn’t shake it for weeks after. (c)
Q:
I’ve heard of this—reports of dolphins gathering at the undisclosed location. I want to ask the son privately if this is just something cheerful he’s decided to say, or if he has actual evidence of dolphins, if he knows someone who can confirm it. (c)
Q:
I wish that Avery had drawn a few dolphins swimming alongside the crab and the starfish, to give you a better sense of just how comforting this whole business is going to be. (c)
Q:
I wonder if we shouldn’t take Ernest to see more live theater, maybe a show now and then down at that little dinner theater place in Phillipsburg that Rosemary’s always talking about. Maybe it’s the sort of thing that would help him locate something different and good inside himself. (c)
Q:
Besides, I want to send you off with something forward-looking. Something hopeful. (c)
Q:
None of the fathers are asking not to be taken, which is rare. (c)
Q:
Nozzle heads hang from the ceiling inside the crate, waiting to release anesthetic gas when you reach critical depth. I wish Avery could see these. I don’t know if he knows about them, but he should, to understand that we’re not monsters. That we care what happens to you after you drop. (c)
Q:
We should be gathering around one another as a family, relying on our shared love and support to light a path out of this parking lot and back to the happy lives we’ve worked so hard for. (c)
Q:
I will study this drawing often in the weeks to come, meditating on its many perfections. I will feel sorry that I am the one looking at it, that it is here with me and not with you, rolled out before you on your tray as the floodlights show you dolphins and marlins, sea breams and hammerheads, and all the other guardians of the undisclosed location, whose waters, we are told, are calm, and patient, and deeper than we can know. (c)
Q:
The Winsome Bride has been sinking for months. As far as we can tell, the beast has mistaken us for one of her kind and is, in her own fashion, pitching woo. She lowers us patiently, tenderly, as a mother might drown her child. Her love-struck tentacles have hamstrung our rudder, bent our keel, noosed up our figurehead. (c)
Q:
The mermaids have appeared earlier than usual today because of the books. ... The mermaids are blue-skinned and black-eyed, but apparently literate enough to tackle the Brontës and Isaac Asimov. The volumes that have not sunk or disintegrated bob coquettishly in the water beside them. The mermaids pluck them out at random and leaf through them dreamily. (c)
Q:
Spooning me from behind, she looped her arms over my shoulders, spidered her small legs around my waist, and held me. For that whole night she held me so firm and tight I almost strained to breathe, but for the first time since the creature took up its amorous cause, I felt the maddening anticipation ease, squeezed out of me like a bellows. In my ear, soft as cotton, she sang a steady hush, her breath rising and falling with the waves, harmonizing with the wind, and though the creature’s grip was so firm upon us that neither wind nor waves held any sway, and though her legs and arms felt strong enough to crush the breath inside me to diamond, for that brief moment I felt returned to the sea I knew. (c)
Q:
They pray for guidance, and safety, and certainty. They pray for revelations, and the wisdom to rightly interpret them. They do not know if this is the correct action, but they have faith. They serve a mystery, the Voice that can’t be heard outside the wordless barrows of the soul. They can only hope they hear it correctly. They fear that it might leave, and that it might stay. They want it to fill them up and drown them out. It is the exaltation of being relentlessly tested, the torment of being inescapably loved. (c)
Q:
All time travelers share the same secret fear: that one day their collective lack of self-control, their inability to resist looking, touching, taking, will purge them from the ranks of having ever existed, robbing them of a life, a death, and a birth all at once. Honestly, when they really think about it, it’s a miracle it hasn’t happened already.
These are the thoughts that keep time travelers up at night. (c)
Our society tends to consist of individuals who are at their most vulnerable at the beginning and the end of our lifetimes. The idea to protect each other at our weakest is not new. It has been mulled over by many and still hasn't been resolved satisfactorily. Which is why we often hear of old people dying of neglect or alone or from easily preventable mishaps or illnesses. We hear of it, we empathise and we do nothing. Nothing worthy of mention, in most cases. We are too busy or are not qualified or have other issues or... whatever.
This story managed to drag casually into discussion a dystopian 'solution' of these issues: we get a society where old people are thrown away like trash! Even this process is called 'crating'! For one thing, I do realise the author probably thought it a good idea to make a poignant illustration of the fact that our society is sort of ill. We try to do our best and still we often fail at it miserably. We cannot develop a consistent view on euthanasia, on who should care for the terminally ill or the mature people. We believe that age is something to be ashamed of. We do it both ways: our children hurry to grow up to become adults scared of the time's passage. For us, the time is not a bringer of maturity but rather a foreboding of the end of our days. Our standards of beauty, health, living, style, you name it - everything is aimed at staying frozen at some point in time. This is not a healthy way to live, as a society or a person. And still, this is what's going on.
Personally, I dislike the casual approach. I don't like the light-handed touch where we can glimpse at this horror in a casual way. One willing to do just that, shoud remember 2 things:
- Cautionary tales have the distressing tendency to cross the line and go on to becoming the new know-how manuals. Just remember the '1984' and 'Brave New World'. Find any similarities to anything, anywhere?
- The Overton window is still open. Things we keep discussing casually might turn out to become the things our grandchildren do casually. We wouldn't want to wake up, one day, in a world where the new norm is to kill off the old people as soon as they become 'too much bother', would we? Even if the killing off would go with nice bells and whistles:
Q:
“And don’t forget the pressure-resistant window,” the son adds. “You’ll be able to see those dolphins nice and clear. How about that, Dad? Dolphins all the way down, keeping you company.” (c)
I don't know how to rate it. Therefore, let's count:
* The writing is cool, clear and readable, in the 1st story. +5 stars
* The storybook is diverse and touches many topics. +1 star
* 'Our Fathers at Sea' is very thought-inducing. +1 star
* The subject of 'Our Fathers at Sea' is beyond unsettling and way too light-hearted for such serious a subject. -1 star
* 'Bodies in Space' - totally uninteresting. It probably was supposed to be innovative and clever. And it wasn't. Instead it was a rambling mix of space, breasts/amoebas (!), flirting, a blinking diode in one's head, techs, blogging, brands (Volvo?), Man/Woman of the Future... A salad of weird stuff. -1 star
* Masturbation session in 'Bodies in Space' - pointless. -1 star
* The Sea Beast Takes a Lover' - the best thing about this story is the heading. The ending was inconclusive. What was that with the refugee? What was that with the miniboat and minimonster? The crew? Did they die? Could we have skipped all this drama and just put it all in a 1-liner 'Everyone died'? -1 star
* 'The King's Teacup at Rest' Didn't get it. -1 star
* 'He Is the Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah, Hallelujah' Didn't like it. -1 star
* 'Rockabye, Rocketboy' Ouch! 'Plug detective'?? Euphemism for (robo)porn? The Rocketboy demise? -2 stars
* The Saints in the Parlor' Blasphemous? For what? -1 star
* 'Andy, Lord of Ruin' Stupid, didn't care about it -1 star
* 'Jenny' Uh? Was it written for shock value? +1 star for writing, idea & structure -1 star for everything else
* 'Rite of Baptism' Unreadable. -1 star
* 'Blunderbuss' Time travel story. +1 star for readability
This should have a total of - (minus!) 3 stars! Since there is no such rating here, this is going to be rated at 1 star, which is rather generous, I think.
Q: The night before we load you into the crate and watch as the helicopter carries you off to the undisclosed location to drop you into the Atlantic Ocean, we eat dinner as a family. (c)
Q:
Just follow your heart. (c)
Q:
I remember once, not long after we crated Mom, we took you and the kids down to Ainsdale... (c)
Q:
It’s our lake, yours and mine, and now mine and my sons’. For all the fighting, all the hurt feelings, the years of not talking even before you lost the ability to speak, we still end up here, you and I, looking at a lake full of stars. (c)
Q:
You showed me how controlling the water level prevented them from maturing into frogs, and how nice it was to keep tadpoles as they were, blindly swimming around until they died and we replaced them with new ones. (c) This reads ominous.
Q:
“Daddy’s gone,” she says, and I feel the relief whistle out of me like an untied balloon. You’re gone. I don’t have to crate you. I’m so happy I dive into the lake, where the dream lets me breathe freely, the warm water hugging me close until I wake up. (c)
Q:
I remember one of the clowns made me a balloon giraffe, and your father asked, like some do, not to be taken, to be held over till the following year. Next year, he promised, he’d be ready. I don’t remember what you did, if you wept or tried to argue with him, or if you simply stood by like I am now. I remember that he had the good sense to ask only once, but even that small moment of pleading caught me off guard, and I couldn’t shake it for weeks after. (c)
Q:
I’ve heard of this—reports of dolphins gathering at the undisclosed location. I want to ask the son privately if this is just something cheerful he’s decided to say, or if he has actual evidence of dolphins, if he knows someone who can confirm it. (c)
Q:
I wish that Avery had drawn a few dolphins swimming alongside the crab and the starfish, to give you a better sense of just how comforting this whole business is going to be. (c)
Q:
I wonder if we shouldn’t take Ernest to see more live theater, maybe a show now and then down at that little dinner theater place in Phillipsburg that Rosemary’s always talking about. Maybe it’s the sort of thing that would help him locate something different and good inside himself. (c)
Q:
Besides, I want to send you off with something forward-looking. Something hopeful. (c)
Q:
None of the fathers are asking not to be taken, which is rare. (c)
Q:
Nozzle heads hang from the ceiling inside the crate, waiting to release anesthetic gas when you reach critical depth. I wish Avery could see these. I don’t know if he knows about them, but he should, to understand that we’re not monsters. That we care what happens to you after you drop. (c)
Q:
We should be gathering around one another as a family, relying on our shared love and support to light a path out of this parking lot and back to the happy lives we’ve worked so hard for. (c)
Q:
I will study this drawing often in the weeks to come, meditating on its many perfections. I will feel sorry that I am the one looking at it, that it is here with me and not with you, rolled out before you on your tray as the floodlights show you dolphins and marlins, sea breams and hammerheads, and all the other guardians of the undisclosed location, whose waters, we are told, are calm, and patient, and deeper than we can know. (c)
Q:
The Winsome Bride has been sinking for months. As far as we can tell, the beast has mistaken us for one of her kind and is, in her own fashion, pitching woo. She lowers us patiently, tenderly, as a mother might drown her child. Her love-struck tentacles have hamstrung our rudder, bent our keel, noosed up our figurehead. (c)
Q:
The mermaids have appeared earlier than usual today because of the books. ... The mermaids are blue-skinned and black-eyed, but apparently literate enough to tackle the Brontës and Isaac Asimov. The volumes that have not sunk or disintegrated bob coquettishly in the water beside them. The mermaids pluck them out at random and leaf through them dreamily. (c)
Q:
Spooning me from behind, she looped her arms over my shoulders, spidered her small legs around my waist, and held me. For that whole night she held me so firm and tight I almost strained to breathe, but for the first time since the creature took up its amorous cause, I felt the maddening anticipation ease, squeezed out of me like a bellows. In my ear, soft as cotton, she sang a steady hush, her breath rising and falling with the waves, harmonizing with the wind, and though the creature’s grip was so firm upon us that neither wind nor waves held any sway, and though her legs and arms felt strong enough to crush the breath inside me to diamond, for that brief moment I felt returned to the sea I knew. (c)
Q:
They pray for guidance, and safety, and certainty. They pray for revelations, and the wisdom to rightly interpret them. They do not know if this is the correct action, but they have faith. They serve a mystery, the Voice that can’t be heard outside the wordless barrows of the soul. They can only hope they hear it correctly. They fear that it might leave, and that it might stay. They want it to fill them up and drown them out. It is the exaltation of being relentlessly tested, the torment of being inescapably loved. (c)
Q:
All time travelers share the same secret fear: that one day their collective lack of self-control, their inability to resist looking, touching, taking, will purge them from the ranks of having ever existed, robbing them of a life, a death, and a birth all at once. Honestly, when they really think about it, it’s a miracle it hasn’t happened already.
These are the thoughts that keep time travelers up at night. (c)
March 8, 2018
I was beyond excited about this: it sounded so very much up my alley. The biggest strength of this collection is Andreasen’s fascinating use of juxtaposition: pirates with smart phones, doubting saints, death as celebration. His premises are brilliant and his imagination flawless; however, there was something missing for me here. I cannot quite pinpoint what exactly my problem with this collection was. There is nothing wrong with it per se but it did not invoke any strong feelings in me whatsoever.
As usual, there were stories that were stronger than others. I particularly enjoyed Rockabye, Rocketboy; a story about a boy about to explode. It’s quiet rumination on compassion and doing what is right really resonated with me. I also really happen to love short stories told from a collective we-perspective. I also adored The Saints in the Parlour: I found it funny and moving and just very clever. On the other end of the spectrum I thought The Man Of The Future fell flat. The main character was unsympathetic and felt slightly lazily constructed. The message of this story stayed muddled for me.
Overall, the writing is solid, the premises intriguing. It just was not the slam-dunk I thougt it would be, quite far from it actually. I did include it in my 5-star prediction post and my list of most anticipated releases after all.
I received an arc of this book curtesy of NetGalley and Head of Zeus in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog
As usual, there were stories that were stronger than others. I particularly enjoyed Rockabye, Rocketboy; a story about a boy about to explode. It’s quiet rumination on compassion and doing what is right really resonated with me. I also really happen to love short stories told from a collective we-perspective. I also adored The Saints in the Parlour: I found it funny and moving and just very clever. On the other end of the spectrum I thought The Man Of The Future fell flat. The main character was unsympathetic and felt slightly lazily constructed. The message of this story stayed muddled for me.
Overall, the writing is solid, the premises intriguing. It just was not the slam-dunk I thougt it would be, quite far from it actually. I did include it in my 5-star prediction post and my list of most anticipated releases after all.
I received an arc of this book curtesy of NetGalley and Head of Zeus in exchange for an honest review.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog
March 5, 2018
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover
is a collection of slightly odd short stories which all share a similar vibe, however, not one I can just pinpoint like that. They are easy to read, quite imaginative and all of them pretty shattering by the end. I am not a huge fan of short stories (as they almost always involve incomprehensible levels of oddity), and maybe that's why I feel like I could have enjoyed this book more. But if you're a fan of short stories, you will probably like
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover.
Some Of The Stories Are Brilliant
My favorite is probably the one with the sea beast - the one that gave the book its name. Yes, it's literally a sea beast who decided to mate with a ship. And its love and care is currently sinking it. The story is refreshingly witty, colorful and lively, and the ending is simply perfect. Mermaids who like to read Bronte sisters and Asimov. An amorous sea monster. A drowning library. A cannibal admiral (it even rhymes!) And all of that humor in death. T he ship is almost an allegory of our current political and economical system, the world nothing more than a sinking wreck, the deck hands eating scraps, the officers still eating good food, and the captain eating... the officers. "All sailors are Christians moonlighting as witch doctors." - had the rest of the stories been as strong as this one, I would have felt much differently about this collection!
But Some Of The Other Stories...
As it is typical with short stories, they are decidedly odd - as I've already mentioned. Some of them are odder than others. And I feel like this was most of the stories in this collection. Roughly around the middle I just stopped trying and gave up wrapping my mind around some of them. And that's alright - maybe they're just not for me. Hence the 3 stars!
Other Books You Might Like
I have, however, read short story collections that I really liked. While they share the oddity, they also carry more significance, in my opinion. Things to do when You're Goth in the Country was truly refreshing, dark and just about weird enough to still be really cool. Meanwhile Rockets Versus Gravity was all interconnected and an absolute play on feels some of the time, and I truly enjoyed it.
I thank The Penguin Group, Dutton Books and Apollo for giving me a copy of the book in exchange to my honest opinion.
Read Post on My Blog | My Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter
Some Of The Stories Are Brilliant
My favorite is probably the one with the sea beast - the one that gave the book its name. Yes, it's literally a sea beast who decided to mate with a ship. And its love and care is currently sinking it. The story is refreshingly witty, colorful and lively, and the ending is simply perfect. Mermaids who like to read Bronte sisters and Asimov. An amorous sea monster. A drowning library. A cannibal admiral (it even rhymes!) And all of that humor in death. T he ship is almost an allegory of our current political and economical system, the world nothing more than a sinking wreck, the deck hands eating scraps, the officers still eating good food, and the captain eating... the officers. "All sailors are Christians moonlighting as witch doctors." - had the rest of the stories been as strong as this one, I would have felt much differently about this collection!
But Some Of The Other Stories...
As it is typical with short stories, they are decidedly odd - as I've already mentioned. Some of them are odder than others. And I feel like this was most of the stories in this collection. Roughly around the middle I just stopped trying and gave up wrapping my mind around some of them. And that's alright - maybe they're just not for me. Hence the 3 stars!
Other Books You Might Like
I have, however, read short story collections that I really liked. While they share the oddity, they also carry more significance, in my opinion. Things to do when You're Goth in the Country was truly refreshing, dark and just about weird enough to still be really cool. Meanwhile Rockets Versus Gravity was all interconnected and an absolute play on feels some of the time, and I truly enjoyed it.
I thank The Penguin Group, Dutton Books and Apollo for giving me a copy of the book in exchange to my honest opinion.
Read Post on My Blog | My Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter
July 24, 2017
Wildly imaginative, oddly emotional, bizarrely wonderful, and truly fantastic and unforgettable stories. Other reps have been raving about this, their early reads speak to it's awesome quality too.
It has a uniquely clever voice and prose - you don't know where the stories are going but since they feel familiar yet raw, you blindly accept them and feel the emotional human connection.
It has a uniquely clever voice and prose - you don't know where the stories are going but since they feel familiar yet raw, you blindly accept them and feel the emotional human connection.
March 24, 2018
Odd stories, a few with an undercurrent of horror. I liked the first story about euthanizing old men and the one about the sea beast. Otherwise, much of this collection left me cold.(I did really like the design of the book cover.)
December 8, 2017
When it comes to short stories, I'm picky and hard to impress. A lot has to happen in only a few pages and so many things can go wrong. That being said, I loved this book. It was intelligent. It was original. It was funny and oh so weird. As long as it's done well, I love weird. Bring on the weird.
Michael Andreasen manages to make even the most bizarre stories human and relatable, something that isn't easy to accomplish. In Jenny, there's the suffocation felt by Jenny's brother, who is stuck caring for his headless yet very alive sister. He is her eyes and ears and is even forced to chew her food for her. In The Sea Beast Takes a Lover, the crew of a ship is helpless to stop the slow sinking of their ship due to the amorous attentions of a sea monster. It sounds ridiculous, but the story is a little funny, very tense, and I found myself feeling the crew's inevitable defeat. Andreasen manages to say so much with so little and gives great depth to his characters in mere pages.
There were a few stories towards the end that I didn't really care for, but that's to be expected. There's always one or two. Fortunately, the book begins with, IMO, its strongest stories. I found myself looking forward to each story ending just so another would begin.
Altogether this book is imaginative and strange but wonderfully written. If you're a fan of short stories and love the bizarre, I absolutely recommend this book.
*I received an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Michael Andreasen manages to make even the most bizarre stories human and relatable, something that isn't easy to accomplish. In Jenny, there's the suffocation felt by Jenny's brother, who is stuck caring for his headless yet very alive sister. He is her eyes and ears and is even forced to chew her food for her. In The Sea Beast Takes a Lover, the crew of a ship is helpless to stop the slow sinking of their ship due to the amorous attentions of a sea monster. It sounds ridiculous, but the story is a little funny, very tense, and I found myself feeling the crew's inevitable defeat. Andreasen manages to say so much with so little and gives great depth to his characters in mere pages.
There were a few stories towards the end that I didn't really care for, but that's to be expected. There's always one or two. Fortunately, the book begins with, IMO, its strongest stories. I found myself looking forward to each story ending just so another would begin.
Altogether this book is imaginative and strange but wonderfully written. If you're a fan of short stories and love the bizarre, I absolutely recommend this book.
*I received an ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.
July 4, 2018
I received a free ebook version of this from Netgalley. Thankyou to both Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this! My review is still honest.
This collection of short stories was such a joy to read. The stories themselves were a mixed bag-there were a couple I really didn't like, but some that I really loved. As a collection however, it worked very well as a book full of different concepts and thought-provoking ideas, and that is what I have rated it as. If you are into sci-fi at all, this is one for you.
If you are like me and enjoy having a good idea about a book before reading, then continue reading! If you prefer to go in blind, then please stop reading now! There are no explicit spoilers, but I do explain the premise and give a brief individual review of each story in this collection.
Our Fathers at Sea is set in a world where the old are ‘crated’ in what is considered a traditional family ritual. ‘Crating’ just so happens to be the term to describe when a group of the old and infirm are dropped into a crate in the sea and effectively eliminated. This one wasn’t particularly exciting for such a controversial concept, but it was interesting and had a very sociopathic character whose perspective was odd to read from. It did seem a little too long-winded and I think a lot more could have been done with this concept, so this one gets a 4 stars from me.
Bodies is about robots and aliens and an affair. I’m sure there was some deep meaning that I was meant to fathom, but unfortunately this one went over my head. I found it sweet and mildly interesting, but I’ll probably forget about it quickly. 2 stars.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is an odd one about a sea monster that is gradually sinking a ship. I think a story like this one works best as a great epic novel, as I didn’t feel much about this in short story form. It was exciting, however. 3 stars.
The King’s Teacup at Rest is one of my favourites. It follows the King of Retired Amusements, a sentient bear and a boy trying to find his place. It makes almost no sense, but the atmosphere and descriptions in this one were excellent. There was such a sense of unease and detachment and just a feeling that something is not right. 4 stars.
He is the Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah, Hallejuah is a story with a title that sounds like a Panic! At the Disco song. It was another good one about a disturbed child and twisted maternal instincts, but it was ultimately unfulflling. An open ending didn’t work well for this one. 3.5 stars.
Rockabye, Rocketboy was also one of my favourites. It was so strange and odd, but I loved it. It follows a world where people live in very high buildings, and a young boy legend is known to fly around the skies on turbines. The main character is a erotic star who is obsessed with the rocketboy. This one was just the right kind of weird, and I loved the weird setting and plot. 5 stars.
Andy, Lord of Ruin is the story of a boy who explodes. It’s another endlessly strange one with no real meaning that I can discern, but it was really entertaining to read. Any one of these stories could be a full novel or movie. 3.5 stars.
The Saints in the Parlour is one that makes no sense to me. It has a little irony and dry humour, and follows saints who find themselves in an unfamiliar house. It was interesting, but I just didn’t understand this one. 2 stars.
Jenny is about a headless girl, and it left me feeling very confused and icky. I just don’t get the point of this one at all, especially the ending. 1 star.
Rite of Baptism was about a twisted form of a christening, I’d guess. It was unspeakably bizarre and just a little bit funny. Unfortunately, it was another one that I just didn’t understand! 2 stars.
Blunderbuss is about a school trip to a time travel institute. I really liked this one! It talked a lot about the dilemmas and ethical implications of time travel, and was quite funny to top it off! 4 stars.
This collection of short stories was such a joy to read. The stories themselves were a mixed bag-there were a couple I really didn't like, but some that I really loved. As a collection however, it worked very well as a book full of different concepts and thought-provoking ideas, and that is what I have rated it as. If you are into sci-fi at all, this is one for you.
If you are like me and enjoy having a good idea about a book before reading, then continue reading! If you prefer to go in blind, then please stop reading now! There are no explicit spoilers, but I do explain the premise and give a brief individual review of each story in this collection.
Our Fathers at Sea is set in a world where the old are ‘crated’ in what is considered a traditional family ritual. ‘Crating’ just so happens to be the term to describe when a group of the old and infirm are dropped into a crate in the sea and effectively eliminated. This one wasn’t particularly exciting for such a controversial concept, but it was interesting and had a very sociopathic character whose perspective was odd to read from. It did seem a little too long-winded and I think a lot more could have been done with this concept, so this one gets a 4 stars from me.
Bodies is about robots and aliens and an affair. I’m sure there was some deep meaning that I was meant to fathom, but unfortunately this one went over my head. I found it sweet and mildly interesting, but I’ll probably forget about it quickly. 2 stars.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is an odd one about a sea monster that is gradually sinking a ship. I think a story like this one works best as a great epic novel, as I didn’t feel much about this in short story form. It was exciting, however. 3 stars.
The King’s Teacup at Rest is one of my favourites. It follows the King of Retired Amusements, a sentient bear and a boy trying to find his place. It makes almost no sense, but the atmosphere and descriptions in this one were excellent. There was such a sense of unease and detachment and just a feeling that something is not right. 4 stars.
He is the Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah, Hallejuah is a story with a title that sounds like a Panic! At the Disco song. It was another good one about a disturbed child and twisted maternal instincts, but it was ultimately unfulflling. An open ending didn’t work well for this one. 3.5 stars.
Rockabye, Rocketboy was also one of my favourites. It was so strange and odd, but I loved it. It follows a world where people live in very high buildings, and a young boy legend is known to fly around the skies on turbines. The main character is a erotic star who is obsessed with the rocketboy. This one was just the right kind of weird, and I loved the weird setting and plot. 5 stars.
Andy, Lord of Ruin is the story of a boy who explodes. It’s another endlessly strange one with no real meaning that I can discern, but it was really entertaining to read. Any one of these stories could be a full novel or movie. 3.5 stars.
The Saints in the Parlour is one that makes no sense to me. It has a little irony and dry humour, and follows saints who find themselves in an unfamiliar house. It was interesting, but I just didn’t understand this one. 2 stars.
Jenny is about a headless girl, and it left me feeling very confused and icky. I just don’t get the point of this one at all, especially the ending. 1 star.
Rite of Baptism was about a twisted form of a christening, I’d guess. It was unspeakably bizarre and just a little bit funny. Unfortunately, it was another one that I just didn’t understand! 2 stars.
Blunderbuss is about a school trip to a time travel institute. I really liked this one! It talked a lot about the dilemmas and ethical implications of time travel, and was quite funny to top it off! 4 stars.
March 2, 2018
This was a very interesting selection of stories but it just didn't do it for me.
I think the problem I faced was that the stories didn't have enough of a plot to keep me going. The stories were all very interesting, blending science fiction with literary fiction and mixing up different time points. But the stories were just ... there. Nothing really happened. There was no catalyst, no change, no sense of a build up. The stories fell flat for me because they just seemed like descriptions of a different time and place, rather than any specific event that I could focus on.
It was also hard for me to connect with the characters. There was no emotional connection with them, and they felt very two-dimensional. It made it hard for me to want to continue reading the stories when I couldn't care about what was happening for them.
I think that this was a collection that was unique in its blend of literary and science fiction. However, the lack of plot in the stories combined with the lack of emotional connection with the characters meant that it fell short for me. I'm giving this a 2/5 stars.
For more reviews, visit: www.veereading.wordpress.com
I think the problem I faced was that the stories didn't have enough of a plot to keep me going. The stories were all very interesting, blending science fiction with literary fiction and mixing up different time points. But the stories were just ... there. Nothing really happened. There was no catalyst, no change, no sense of a build up. The stories fell flat for me because they just seemed like descriptions of a different time and place, rather than any specific event that I could focus on.
It was also hard for me to connect with the characters. There was no emotional connection with them, and they felt very two-dimensional. It made it hard for me to want to continue reading the stories when I couldn't care about what was happening for them.
I think that this was a collection that was unique in its blend of literary and science fiction. However, the lack of plot in the stories combined with the lack of emotional connection with the characters meant that it fell short for me. I'm giving this a 2/5 stars.
For more reviews, visit: www.veereading.wordpress.com
February 6, 2018
3.5 stars Thank you to First to Read and Dutton Books for this ARC ~ to publish Feb 27, 2018.
Crazy stories, out of this world, but surprisingly relative to many human emotions. From the death of our elderly - which was my favorite in this collection, reminiscent of Soylent Green - to learning to live with everyday change and the loss of our norms these stories were were told in a rich fantasy. From watching the world of plenty fall apart to riding the waves of a pirate ship this book will give you a wide invitation to your own individual interpretation.
Just the book to break up your normal reading pattern and cleanse your pallet, opening up the imaginary sectors of your mind.
A new voice in the science fiction world and definitely one to follow.
Crazy stories, out of this world, but surprisingly relative to many human emotions. From the death of our elderly - which was my favorite in this collection, reminiscent of Soylent Green - to learning to live with everyday change and the loss of our norms these stories were were told in a rich fantasy. From watching the world of plenty fall apart to riding the waves of a pirate ship this book will give you a wide invitation to your own individual interpretation.
Just the book to break up your normal reading pattern and cleanse your pallet, opening up the imaginary sectors of your mind.
A new voice in the science fiction world and definitely one to follow.
January 5, 2018
I received a free e-ARC through First to Read and NetGalley from the publishers at Penguin Random House/Dutton. I was really excited to read this, since Ray Bradbury and Karen Russell have fueled my love for weird short stories. The downside is that the competition is extremely steep.
The Sea Beast Takes A Lover is a collection of short stories that are part science fiction, part literary fiction, and part something else entirely. In Andreasen’s worlds, a giant squid anchors a ship for weeks, desperate to be loved, a girl survives into adulthood without a head, and older generations are crated at the bottom of the sea.
I seem to be in the minority of readers who didn’t enjoy this collection at all. I struggled through it, and not one of the stories really stood out to me. I’m having trouble pinpointing exactly what didn’t work for me overall, but it seems to be more specific failures in each story. The most common one is that many of them lack any sort of plot or closure. “The Sea Beast Takes a Lover”, “Jenny”, and “Andy, Lord of Ruin” are good examples of this. There are jarring (in a good way) juxtapositions: pirates with cell phones and archaic settings with modern slang. They provide interesting snapshots of things–a ship rendered immovable by a sea monster’s affection, a girl without a head, a boy who goes nuclear–but that’s all. They don’t go anywhere. Nothing happens. Make of it what you will.
Not that things necessarily have to happen for a book to be good. A story can explore characters or ideas equally well, but there’s no strong sense of that here either. The characters are, by and large, the kind of self-serving and at times outright despicable cutouts that I’m weary of in adult fiction; it’s no wonder so many adults read YA, which is at least full of people I’d want to know. The narrator in “Our Fathers at Sea” blames his father for his illness, the little girl in “He Is the Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah, Hallelujah” actively thinks about killing a baby, and the brother in “Jenny” resents his headless sister for her helplessness. There’s little to no empathy or human connection to be found anywhere, and they’re not even horrible in interesting ways.
The first story, “Our Fathers at Sea”, is probably the strongest narratively and emotionally. It at least has a clear beginning, middle, and end, and there’s no small amount of empathy in it–although that empathy comes strictly from the reader and not from the narrator. In part, it seems like a criticism of euthanasia, but I don’t think the story comes down hard on either side of the argument. If there is a message, I think it’s something to do with paying attention to issues like this and not looking away because they make us sad or uncomfortable. The rest of the collection is much less clear. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to make of it, or of any of the situations presented here. If there’s a moral or a philosophy, it’s well beyond me.
It’s mostly downhill from there, with the religiously inclined stories hitting the bottom of the barrel. “The Saints in the Parlor” reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk without the edginess or the insight that occasionally makes Chuck Palahniuk worth paying attention to. “Bodies in Space” is the kind of penis-centric literary fiction that I’d hoped we were moving away from and seems mostly an excuse to describe what boobs look like in zero gravity. (Honestly, if you need more than one paragraph to talk about boobs, I think you should reconsider what genre you’re writing in. Women do it and it’s romance, but if men do it, it’s called literary fiction.) The narrator spends most of the story bemoaning the fact that his wife left him after he cheated on her (and then, inconveniently, was abducted by aliens). He never once pauses to consider what that must have been like for her, and he’s equally disdainful of his mistress.
The writing is a little preoccupied with its own cleverness, as if Andreasen had a thesaurus open for each story and picked the most archaic words he could find. I don’t think it’s intentionally pretentious, just an awkward cross between science fiction and literary fiction that ultimately doesn’t do either very well. Absent plot, character, philosophy, or human connection, the stories seem to rely solely on their ability to entertain–assuming readers are entertained by the same kinds of things Andreasen is. It’s not a bad thing for a story collection to do, but it’s a problem if you don’t find a single one of them enjoyable. There’s nothing else to save it.
I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.
The Sea Beast Takes A Lover is a collection of short stories that are part science fiction, part literary fiction, and part something else entirely. In Andreasen’s worlds, a giant squid anchors a ship for weeks, desperate to be loved, a girl survives into adulthood without a head, and older generations are crated at the bottom of the sea.
I seem to be in the minority of readers who didn’t enjoy this collection at all. I struggled through it, and not one of the stories really stood out to me. I’m having trouble pinpointing exactly what didn’t work for me overall, but it seems to be more specific failures in each story. The most common one is that many of them lack any sort of plot or closure. “The Sea Beast Takes a Lover”, “Jenny”, and “Andy, Lord of Ruin” are good examples of this. There are jarring (in a good way) juxtapositions: pirates with cell phones and archaic settings with modern slang. They provide interesting snapshots of things–a ship rendered immovable by a sea monster’s affection, a girl without a head, a boy who goes nuclear–but that’s all. They don’t go anywhere. Nothing happens. Make of it what you will.
Not that things necessarily have to happen for a book to be good. A story can explore characters or ideas equally well, but there’s no strong sense of that here either. The characters are, by and large, the kind of self-serving and at times outright despicable cutouts that I’m weary of in adult fiction; it’s no wonder so many adults read YA, which is at least full of people I’d want to know. The narrator in “Our Fathers at Sea” blames his father for his illness, the little girl in “He Is the Rainstorm and the Sandstorm, Hallelujah, Hallelujah” actively thinks about killing a baby, and the brother in “Jenny” resents his headless sister for her helplessness. There’s little to no empathy or human connection to be found anywhere, and they’re not even horrible in interesting ways.
The first story, “Our Fathers at Sea”, is probably the strongest narratively and emotionally. It at least has a clear beginning, middle, and end, and there’s no small amount of empathy in it–although that empathy comes strictly from the reader and not from the narrator. In part, it seems like a criticism of euthanasia, but I don’t think the story comes down hard on either side of the argument. If there is a message, I think it’s something to do with paying attention to issues like this and not looking away because they make us sad or uncomfortable. The rest of the collection is much less clear. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to make of it, or of any of the situations presented here. If there’s a moral or a philosophy, it’s well beyond me.
It’s mostly downhill from there, with the religiously inclined stories hitting the bottom of the barrel. “The Saints in the Parlor” reminds me of Chuck Palahniuk without the edginess or the insight that occasionally makes Chuck Palahniuk worth paying attention to. “Bodies in Space” is the kind of penis-centric literary fiction that I’d hoped we were moving away from and seems mostly an excuse to describe what boobs look like in zero gravity. (Honestly, if you need more than one paragraph to talk about boobs, I think you should reconsider what genre you’re writing in. Women do it and it’s romance, but if men do it, it’s called literary fiction.) The narrator spends most of the story bemoaning the fact that his wife left him after he cheated on her (and then, inconveniently, was abducted by aliens). He never once pauses to consider what that must have been like for her, and he’s equally disdainful of his mistress.
The writing is a little preoccupied with its own cleverness, as if Andreasen had a thesaurus open for each story and picked the most archaic words he could find. I don’t think it’s intentionally pretentious, just an awkward cross between science fiction and literary fiction that ultimately doesn’t do either very well. Absent plot, character, philosophy, or human connection, the stories seem to rely solely on their ability to entertain–assuming readers are entertained by the same kinds of things Andreasen is. It’s not a bad thing for a story collection to do, but it’s a problem if you don’t find a single one of them enjoyable. There’s nothing else to save it.
I review regularly at brightbeautifulthings.tumblr.com.
September 22, 2017
What a bravura performance from Andreasen! The stories here are all weirdly wonderful with an inventive energy which positively crackles off the page.
Set in strange worlds where a girl can live without a head, where aliens want to understand what it means to be human, where things at the Time Travel Institute can go horribly wrong, and where a love-lorn tentacled sea-beast can desire a ship (while nymphomaniac mermaids hover hopefully with their eyes on the sailors), these stories combine a ferocious imagination with the ability to deliver an emotional kick to the gut. There's real feeling here, and that's what moves these tales on from being fine examples of craft and finish to having humanity and depth.
As with any collection, some stories will speak to individual readers more than others (my least favourite were the two dealing with religious faith) but overall this is a fabulous introduction to an exciting writer - a little bit Angela Carter, but really Andreasen has a voice of his own.
Thanks to Head of Zeus for an ARC via NetGalley.
Set in strange worlds where a girl can live without a head, where aliens want to understand what it means to be human, where things at the Time Travel Institute can go horribly wrong, and where a love-lorn tentacled sea-beast can desire a ship (while nymphomaniac mermaids hover hopefully with their eyes on the sailors), these stories combine a ferocious imagination with the ability to deliver an emotional kick to the gut. There's real feeling here, and that's what moves these tales on from being fine examples of craft and finish to having humanity and depth.
As with any collection, some stories will speak to individual readers more than others (my least favourite were the two dealing with religious faith) but overall this is a fabulous introduction to an exciting writer - a little bit Angela Carter, but really Andreasen has a voice of his own.
Thanks to Head of Zeus for an ARC via NetGalley.
September 19, 2018
a collection of delightfully weird stories, that unfortunately were ruined by all the casual misogyny. it’s been a while since i read something that just OOZED “written by a straight dude”. the guyinyourmfa twitter would be proud.
/i received a free copy of this story via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
/i received a free copy of this story via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
December 27, 2017
Wow! What a fabulous, strange and beautiful imagination Michael Andreasen has! I so much enjoyed this collection of entertaining, surreal, humorous and yet oddly touching stories told in fresh, muscular prose. Highly recommended for lovers of the weird.
Thank you to Edelweiss for this ARC.
Thank you to Edelweiss for this ARC.
October 25, 2017
My interest in this book was limited to the title. I was intrigued. I JUST HAD TO READ IT BUT somewhere in my mind I had this feeling that I was going to be disappointed by what I encounter when I saw the email stating that my request for the book had been approved (on Netgalley), I felt giddy with excitement but there was also a hint of sadness – THAT IT’LL BE A BIG-ASS DISAPPOINTMENT.
And let me tell you one thing –
I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO FUCKING WRONG IN MY ENTIRE LIFE (except maybe once, when I was little and thought that if I dug deep enough, I’ll find lava ;p)
The writing was surprisingly gripping. It flowed from word to word, sentence to sentence like a river released from a dam. I felt myself drawn into these stories in spite of myself. It was just as surreal and otherworldly as the title.
The author has this rare quality of making the simplest actions seem poignant, It wasn’t done to the extreme though – WHICH I QUITE LIKED. I wonder if there are more like him who can write with such ease? Or at least make it seem like it?
It’s amazing how the subtle, tricky emotions never leave the word. That’s the kind of narrative that actually leaves an impression on the reader – one soo faint YET effective. These stories will stay with me forever – even if just the essence of them. But I am NOT FORGETTING THE IMPACT – EVER!
The Sea Beast Takes A Lover deals with loss in a remarkable way. Reading these stories felt like being on a ship in the middle of the ocean: a constant splatter of emotions – Always on the surface, but embedded deep into the words as well.
Every little thought is presented in a way that i felt like I was right there, in the author’s mind. It felt so effortless. The narrator’s thoughts enters the reader’s mind with a jolt and the distance between him and the reader seems to vanish as soon as he starts speaking.
Every story in this book was an odd mix of peace and restlessness and I could not avoid feeling either. There was such an easy originality to it, such that stares right into your face the whole time BUT is subtle in ways that you’ll miss if you do not pay a very close attention.
An alien abduction (one of the stories – BODIES IN SPACE) wouldn’t have been this interesting if it wasn’t simultaneously linked to the regret and memory of a man ashamed of his choices. The most impressive quality is the author’s ability to weave important matters – emotions – with the seemingly lifeless ones – providing a freshness to each word and a magical charm to each sentence.
As I moved from story to story, my mind was painted with such vivid images in my mind that I was left thoroughly shook. and I AM NOT KIDDING when I say that there aren’t many people who can do that with a literary quality. The details drawn around every little scene were marvelous and breathtaking.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover poses magnificent questions hidden under a cloak of simplicity. This book demands your entire attention BUT AT THE SAME TIME, draws you in ever so stealthily, like a mouse nudging at a piece of cheese and you won’t realize what held power over your attention until AFTER you’ve been thrown out of the MAGICAL (in the most subtle ways) ride. And then, you’ll just sit there, wondering if it really is over because your mind is still haunted by those stories and YOU LIKE IT THAT WAY. It leaves your head full of the remnants once you are done reading it but it gives you the liberty to put in your own thoughts as well –
The beautiful union between the words on the pages and the thoughts in your mind will leave you in a gentle exhilaration.
And let me tell you one thing –
I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO FUCKING WRONG IN MY ENTIRE LIFE (except maybe once, when I was little and thought that if I dug deep enough, I’ll find lava ;p)
The writing was surprisingly gripping. It flowed from word to word, sentence to sentence like a river released from a dam. I felt myself drawn into these stories in spite of myself. It was just as surreal and otherworldly as the title.
The author has this rare quality of making the simplest actions seem poignant, It wasn’t done to the extreme though – WHICH I QUITE LIKED. I wonder if there are more like him who can write with such ease? Or at least make it seem like it?
It’s amazing how the subtle, tricky emotions never leave the word. That’s the kind of narrative that actually leaves an impression on the reader – one soo faint YET effective. These stories will stay with me forever – even if just the essence of them. But I am NOT FORGETTING THE IMPACT – EVER!
The Sea Beast Takes A Lover deals with loss in a remarkable way. Reading these stories felt like being on a ship in the middle of the ocean: a constant splatter of emotions – Always on the surface, but embedded deep into the words as well.
Every little thought is presented in a way that i felt like I was right there, in the author’s mind. It felt so effortless. The narrator’s thoughts enters the reader’s mind with a jolt and the distance between him and the reader seems to vanish as soon as he starts speaking.
Every story in this book was an odd mix of peace and restlessness and I could not avoid feeling either. There was such an easy originality to it, such that stares right into your face the whole time BUT is subtle in ways that you’ll miss if you do not pay a very close attention.
An alien abduction (one of the stories – BODIES IN SPACE) wouldn’t have been this interesting if it wasn’t simultaneously linked to the regret and memory of a man ashamed of his choices. The most impressive quality is the author’s ability to weave important matters – emotions – with the seemingly lifeless ones – providing a freshness to each word and a magical charm to each sentence.
As I moved from story to story, my mind was painted with such vivid images in my mind that I was left thoroughly shook. and I AM NOT KIDDING when I say that there aren’t many people who can do that with a literary quality. The details drawn around every little scene were marvelous and breathtaking.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover poses magnificent questions hidden under a cloak of simplicity. This book demands your entire attention BUT AT THE SAME TIME, draws you in ever so stealthily, like a mouse nudging at a piece of cheese and you won’t realize what held power over your attention until AFTER you’ve been thrown out of the MAGICAL (in the most subtle ways) ride. And then, you’ll just sit there, wondering if it really is over because your mind is still haunted by those stories and YOU LIKE IT THAT WAY. It leaves your head full of the remnants once you are done reading it but it gives you the liberty to put in your own thoughts as well –
The beautiful union between the words on the pages and the thoughts in your mind will leave you in a gentle exhilaration.
March 29, 2018
This was such a wonderfully, deliciously weird collection of stories that ticked all of my boxes. Some of the stories are outright funny, others are quite sinister and the collection is really thoughtfully arranged. As I read each story, I decided that it was my favourite and that to me, is the definition of a great collection. The prose is beautiful in places and suitably spare in others and each story is unique. Honestly, these tales are not like anything I've ever read before, but I think that anyone who likes Kelly Link, Karen Russell or H P Lovecraft would find something to like here. After really struggling to pick one, I think that my favourite was 'The Saints in the Parlour,' which follows four saints as they try to make their way out of a house. It's quirky and funny and yet it also manages to be thought-provoking and ask some big questions about faith. I am truly blown away by the quality of this collection and will eagerly look forward to the next offering by Andreasen. For me, he is definitely one to watch.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
April 9, 2018
I was excited about the premise of this collection of stories. I was ready for the "weird". Yet, I read about the first three stories including the name sake story for this anthology. None of these stories peaked my interest. It was like I was going through the motions of reading but nothing was soaking in on what I was reading in that moment. You could say that after not being impressed with the first three stories that I didn't really have a desire to continue reading the rest of the stories in this collection. This anthology was not my cup of tea but it might be someone else's.
November 19, 2017
I don't think I've ever read a short story collection that I enjoyed this much, before. Even the one or two I didn't really like were still solidly written.
If you're happy to accept short stories as snapshots, and don't expect any kind of explanation, AND you love weird speculative fiction, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of this when it's published next year.
Thank you to Netgalley for the review copy.
If you're happy to accept short stories as snapshots, and don't expect any kind of explanation, AND you love weird speculative fiction, I highly recommend grabbing a copy of this when it's published next year.
Thank you to Netgalley for the review copy.
June 29, 2021
Turned out to be a meh 😕 book. Some of the short stories are only connected to the sea and monsters by s super thin threat.
I did like some and some stories were a bit too weird for my tastes.
I did like some and some stories were a bit too weird for my tastes.
December 20, 2019
This story collection is WEIRD and I was here for it. I loved the first few stories, especially The Sea Beast Takes a Lover. A sea monster falls in love with a modern-day pirate ship and all of the pirates are stuck in the middle of the ocean until the beast has its way with the ship. It was hilarious and was all I ever wanted in a weird way.
There were four stories I loved, the rest were TOO weird and I couldn’t get into them.
There were four stories I loved, the rest were TOO weird and I couldn’t get into them.
February 26, 2018
Every story here was original and fun. I'd say my favorite was Saints in the Parlor.
October 28, 2024
Triggers:
Death
Cheating
Misogyny
Cannibalism
Animal abuse / cruelty
Child abuse / cruelty
Sexual assault
Body horror
Scenes:
MF sex
Masturbation
Notes:
I decided to clear off my book shelves and read some of the shorter books. We will see how this one goes. It's a book of short stories. I literally bought this book because the cover was interesting and know nothing else about it.
Our Fathers At Sea: Weird story about old people are crated up and tossed into the ocean. Even though this is supposed to be touching as much as bizarre, I couldn't stop thinking about how doing this is polluting the ocean.
Bodies in Space: Apparently a guy having an affair gets abducted by aliens with the woman he was cheating with and she wants to be Internet famous because of it. It has a dark ending because the man… can't take it.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: I had to Google what a bosun was. Because it immediately starts talking about it. Apparently a kraken is in heat and wants the ship, so all the sailors are slowly going down with it. Very ambiguous in. I didn't like this story.
The King's Teacup at Rest: A king of retired amusement parks? This is another confusing story where I couldn't quite catch what was going on in the story. I didn't like this story. It was very ambiguous and maybe about the homeless but it's genuinely hard to tell.
He is the rainstorm and the sandstorm: Yeah, I think the character is a young girl in this one who is jealous of a baby. She tries to feed him, which is weird, from her own boobs but then also wants to abandoned him in the forest or something. That ending though. Like, girl did you kill that baby or just put him outside in the rain after your crazy Jesus talk?
Rockabye Rocketboy: a softcore video actress obsesses over a guy/boy who flies across the sky with rockets. Her boyfriend handles the robotics of the robots she bangs in her movies while he himself is probably ace.
The Saints in the Parlor: I noped out of this one. It started in on religion and all the saints had morbid names. Was not interesting and I did not finish this story.
Andy, Lord of Ruin: Andy is a kid who glows. He might explode or he might be… recreated? So they put him in a dumpster at his middle school instead of calling a professional. Weird story. Probably a hidden meaning like metamorphosis behind it.
Jenny: How horrific. This is about a headless girl. Really, just put this headless things food in a blender rather than chew it. Gross. This was the weirdest story of them all. Because she has no head, so how can she think?
Rite of Baptism: No. It's a weird story about baptism. Did not finish.
Blunderbuss: This seems to be about puking kids at a time travel facility while on a field trip.
Death
Cheating
Misogyny
Cannibalism
Animal abuse / cruelty
Child abuse / cruelty
Sexual assault
Body horror
Scenes:
MF sex
Masturbation
Notes:
I decided to clear off my book shelves and read some of the shorter books. We will see how this one goes. It's a book of short stories. I literally bought this book because the cover was interesting and know nothing else about it.
Our Fathers At Sea: Weird story about old people are crated up and tossed into the ocean. Even though this is supposed to be touching as much as bizarre, I couldn't stop thinking about how doing this is polluting the ocean.
Bodies in Space: Apparently a guy having an affair gets abducted by aliens with the woman he was cheating with and she wants to be Internet famous because of it. It has a dark ending because the man… can't take it.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: I had to Google what a bosun was. Because it immediately starts talking about it. Apparently a kraken is in heat and wants the ship, so all the sailors are slowly going down with it. Very ambiguous in. I didn't like this story.
The King's Teacup at Rest: A king of retired amusement parks? This is another confusing story where I couldn't quite catch what was going on in the story. I didn't like this story. It was very ambiguous and maybe about the homeless but it's genuinely hard to tell.
He is the rainstorm and the sandstorm: Yeah, I think the character is a young girl in this one who is jealous of a baby. She tries to feed him, which is weird, from her own boobs but then also wants to abandoned him in the forest or something. That ending though. Like, girl did you kill that baby or just put him outside in the rain after your crazy Jesus talk?
Rockabye Rocketboy: a softcore video actress obsesses over a guy/boy who flies across the sky with rockets. Her boyfriend handles the robotics of the robots she bangs in her movies while he himself is probably ace.
The Saints in the Parlor: I noped out of this one. It started in on religion and all the saints had morbid names. Was not interesting and I did not finish this story.
Andy, Lord of Ruin: Andy is a kid who glows. He might explode or he might be… recreated? So they put him in a dumpster at his middle school instead of calling a professional. Weird story. Probably a hidden meaning like metamorphosis behind it.
Jenny: How horrific. This is about a headless girl. Really, just put this headless things food in a blender rather than chew it. Gross. This was the weirdest story of them all. Because she has no head, so how can she think?
Rite of Baptism: No. It's a weird story about baptism. Did not finish.
Blunderbuss: This seems to be about puking kids at a time travel facility while on a field trip.
July 20, 2020
My brother knows a lot of words that I do not. Can't wait for the novel!
March 25, 2024
Not to air out the man working at Exile in Bookville (beautiful bookstore btw) but this did not give early George Saunders like his little staff note suggested. I’m choosing to forgive but not forget.
November 11, 2017
Gorgeous
This is a wildly entertaining collection, open to enjoyment in whatever fashion suits you.
Do you like to work for your metaphors? Is the local custom of sinking old men into the ocean in sealed containers, and the fanfare that accompanies the event, a metaphor for putting dad in an assisted living facility? Is alien abduction a stand in for a regrettable extra-marital affair? Does an amorous sea beast grasping and slowly sinking a sailing ship really represent an overly obsessive and tiresome lover? Is Andy really ready to explode, or is he going through puberty? Is a headless girl the ultimate special needs child? Can time travelers be more funnymen than Feynman? Darned if I know, but feel free to discuss the matter amongst yourselves.
Or, do you like witty authors who subvert narrative form and toy with story telling conventions? Post-postmodern, with maybe an extra post in there. In each tale we play mix and match with tone, mood, and point of view. Word choices and dialogue drift from formal to archaic to colloquial in order to keep the reader off balance and tease out the artifice and craft behind the writing. It is anarchic and anachronistic, (in one story, literally). Are we being mocked as readers; is the author mocking other authors; is the author confessing his own doubts about his own choices? I don't know. I also don't care because it's all fun and it's all undergirded by a generous sense of humor. I'm glad Andreasen isn't an angry young man, because his angry stories would probably be singularly unnerving.
Putting that aside, at the very minimum this is a rich buffet for the lover of elegant one-liners, deadpan throwaway observations, and the bracing or arresting description. His digressions and parentheticals, alone, make the book worthwhile. Andreasen seems to have mastered the tiny telling detail or comment or bit of business that brings everything in a story into sharp relief. If you are a highliter/underliner type, well, you're going to end up with a very marked up book.
I like playful. I like elegant. I like an occasional emotional ambush. I like a daring and inventive craftsmen. I liked and admired this book.
(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
This is a wildly entertaining collection, open to enjoyment in whatever fashion suits you.
Do you like to work for your metaphors? Is the local custom of sinking old men into the ocean in sealed containers, and the fanfare that accompanies the event, a metaphor for putting dad in an assisted living facility? Is alien abduction a stand in for a regrettable extra-marital affair? Does an amorous sea beast grasping and slowly sinking a sailing ship really represent an overly obsessive and tiresome lover? Is Andy really ready to explode, or is he going through puberty? Is a headless girl the ultimate special needs child? Can time travelers be more funnymen than Feynman? Darned if I know, but feel free to discuss the matter amongst yourselves.
Or, do you like witty authors who subvert narrative form and toy with story telling conventions? Post-postmodern, with maybe an extra post in there. In each tale we play mix and match with tone, mood, and point of view. Word choices and dialogue drift from formal to archaic to colloquial in order to keep the reader off balance and tease out the artifice and craft behind the writing. It is anarchic and anachronistic, (in one story, literally). Are we being mocked as readers; is the author mocking other authors; is the author confessing his own doubts about his own choices? I don't know. I also don't care because it's all fun and it's all undergirded by a generous sense of humor. I'm glad Andreasen isn't an angry young man, because his angry stories would probably be singularly unnerving.
Putting that aside, at the very minimum this is a rich buffet for the lover of elegant one-liners, deadpan throwaway observations, and the bracing or arresting description. His digressions and parentheticals, alone, make the book worthwhile. Andreasen seems to have mastered the tiny telling detail or comment or bit of business that brings everything in a story into sharp relief. If you are a highliter/underliner type, well, you're going to end up with a very marked up book.
I like playful. I like elegant. I like an occasional emotional ambush. I like a daring and inventive craftsmen. I liked and admired this book.
(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
May 29, 2020
I’m clearly biased being an avid Andreasen fan already, but these stories were a delight - intelligent, clever, and creative transports to a dimension seemingly lurking just beneath our own
February 8, 2018
I'm generally a fan of weird, but this collection of short stories was too weird for my taste.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is a collection of stories on the far side of the usual. The stories may touch upon the usual or have familiar elements, but there's always something off. And by 'off,' I don't necessarily mean bad, just simply out of place, like cell phones on an old-timey ship. There's a Twilight Zone vibe to these stories, and my love for that show is what got me interested in this book in the first place.
However, in reading, these stories are nothing like The Twilight Zone. The stories are mostly open ended, which can work well, but when combined with the lack of closure that I was feeling here, it just makes me frustrated. The stories mostly lacked a clear sense of purpose, which made it hard for me to really get into the story, and without being in the story enough to really appreciate the oddness, I typically just ended the story with a halfhearted 'meh.'
Another reviewer said that these stories 'provide interesting snapshots of things,' and I think that's an apt description. The premise of the stories are interesting, and the sense of world building is well done, but I just didn't connect with any of the stories. Maybe they were too weird, maybe they were too depressing, maybe I just needed to read this around Halloween when I'm more in the mood for weird and incredible. Whatever the case, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover was not for me.
*Thanks to Penguin's First to Read for the advance copy of this book.*
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is a collection of stories on the far side of the usual. The stories may touch upon the usual or have familiar elements, but there's always something off. And by 'off,' I don't necessarily mean bad, just simply out of place, like cell phones on an old-timey ship. There's a Twilight Zone vibe to these stories, and my love for that show is what got me interested in this book in the first place.
However, in reading, these stories are nothing like The Twilight Zone. The stories are mostly open ended, which can work well, but when combined with the lack of closure that I was feeling here, it just makes me frustrated. The stories mostly lacked a clear sense of purpose, which made it hard for me to really get into the story, and without being in the story enough to really appreciate the oddness, I typically just ended the story with a halfhearted 'meh.'
Another reviewer said that these stories 'provide interesting snapshots of things,' and I think that's an apt description. The premise of the stories are interesting, and the sense of world building is well done, but I just didn't connect with any of the stories. Maybe they were too weird, maybe they were too depressing, maybe I just needed to read this around Halloween when I'm more in the mood for weird and incredible. Whatever the case, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover was not for me.
*Thanks to Penguin's First to Read for the advance copy of this book.*
February 23, 2018
Read my full review of this book over on The Ploughshares Blog!
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is the debut short story collection from Michael Andreasen. Through a mix of absurdism, hyperbole, science fiction, history, and fantasy, the author draws a map of washed-up American dreams and fears. His stories chart the plains of abandonment, the futility of love, and vague hopes that never solidify. From the titular lonely sea monster to the King of Retired Amusements to time-traveling third graders, Andreasen’s characters explore this map of disappointment and hardship, learning again and again what we already know but are too afraid to speak aloud: Everything comes to an end. Everything.
Read my full review of this book over on The Ploughshares Blog!
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is the debut short story collection from Michael Andreasen. Through a mix of absurdism, hyperbole, science fiction, history, and fantasy, the author draws a map of washed-up American dreams and fears. His stories chart the plains of abandonment, the futility of love, and vague hopes that never solidify. From the titular lonely sea monster to the King of Retired Amusements to time-traveling third graders, Andreasen’s characters explore this map of disappointment and hardship, learning again and again what we already know but are too afraid to speak aloud: Everything comes to an end. Everything.
Read my full review of this book over on The Ploughshares Blog!
February 8, 2018
I received an eARC copy of this from Penguin First to Read.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is a collection of very unique short stories. The stories topics seem to hint at all types of genres but tends to lean towards science fiction (in my opinion), as most of these stories are just..very out there.
Some of the topics this book hits include elders being crated and lowered into the sea, alien abduction, rocket men, jealous children, un-saintly saints, and more. Each story kind of leaves you feeling a little lost and questioning what in the world you just read.
The stories average around 15-20 pages a piece, and can be read in a single sitting. I would recommended this book to fans of Chuck Palahniuk , or anyone who enjoys the strange and unusual.
The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is a collection of very unique short stories. The stories topics seem to hint at all types of genres but tends to lean towards science fiction (in my opinion), as most of these stories are just..very out there.
Some of the topics this book hits include elders being crated and lowered into the sea, alien abduction, rocket men, jealous children, un-saintly saints, and more. Each story kind of leaves you feeling a little lost and questioning what in the world you just read.
The stories average around 15-20 pages a piece, and can be read in a single sitting. I would recommended this book to fans of Chuck Palahniuk , or anyone who enjoys the strange and unusual.
September 19, 2018
In a word: bizarre.
I can't fathom any real theme or motif to the collection, other than a thread of science fiction related content. Most of the stories were forgettable, in fact, the only story I liked was Jenny, however
I can't fathom any real theme or motif to the collection, other than a thread of science fiction related content. Most of the stories were forgettable, in fact, the only story I liked was Jenny, however
September 18, 2017
The title story and several others (Our Fathers at Sea, and Rainstorm/Sandstorm, and Blunderbuss) totally captivated me. The others in this collection were all worthy and enchanting and funny. Andreasen's writings are surreal and capture the full gamut of the existence of being. From a lonely sea monster in heat to a time travel experiment which develops a leak. Enjoy a step into the fantastical.
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