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abithoughtful's review
adventurous
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
'I thought back to the Baudelaire poem and what it seemed to say, how to imagine travel is probably better than actually travelling since no journey can ever satisfy human desire; as soon as one sets out, fantasies get tangled in the rigging and dark birds of doubt begin circling overhead.'
🐡🐡🐡
'But that was the problem with mysterious people, I explained, once you spend time with them they're not so mysterious after all, and as I said that the merman smiled, as if promising, no matter what, to remain a mystery.'
Luisa falls in love with a mysterious boy and together they travel to Zapolite on the Pacific coast, to search for a troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs escaped from the circus, and soak in the strange dream of the Beach of the Dead. There, Luisa moves through cycles of enchantment and disenchantment, drinking each night with a man who does not seem to speak Spanish, falling out of love with her Tomás, chasing mirages that dissolve like sea spray.
🐟🦈🐠
This book is a vision, a dream sequence, espousing a kind of magic realism that, only when you look at it a second time, do you realise is actually entirely devoid of magic. It's a coming of age book but in a strange, half-deflationary way, making growing up a shedding of fantasies, yet refusing to make that a tragedy. It moves sideways and backwards and forwards in a way that usually frustrates me (I want my books to have plots, mostly), but which mesmerized me this time. Like floating in the ocean and feeling the magic of a fish tickling your ankle, only to discover it's just a piece of litter. Like swinging in a hammock at dawn as police sirens swim through the air.
It's pretty short (under 200 pages) and a lovely antidote to some of the really shit horror I've read lately. Glad I took a punt on this one in a charity shop after taking a shine to the cover. I hadn't heard of it before. Check it out if you get the chance - it's great.
🐡🐡🐡
'But that was the problem with mysterious people, I explained, once you spend time with them they're not so mysterious after all, and as I said that the merman smiled, as if promising, no matter what, to remain a mystery.'
Luisa falls in love with a mysterious boy and together they travel to Zapolite on the Pacific coast, to search for a troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs escaped from the circus, and soak in the strange dream of the Beach of the Dead. There, Luisa moves through cycles of enchantment and disenchantment, drinking each night with a man who does not seem to speak Spanish, falling out of love with her Tomás, chasing mirages that dissolve like sea spray.
🐟🦈🐠
This book is a vision, a dream sequence, espousing a kind of magic realism that, only when you look at it a second time, do you realise is actually entirely devoid of magic. It's a coming of age book but in a strange, half-deflationary way, making growing up a shedding of fantasies, yet refusing to make that a tragedy. It moves sideways and backwards and forwards in a way that usually frustrates me (I want my books to have plots, mostly), but which mesmerized me this time. Like floating in the ocean and feeling the magic of a fish tickling your ankle, only to discover it's just a piece of litter. Like swinging in a hammock at dawn as police sirens swim through the air.
It's pretty short (under 200 pages) and a lovely antidote to some of the really shit horror I've read lately. Glad I took a punt on this one in a charity shop after taking a shine to the cover. I hadn't heard of it before. Check it out if you get the chance - it's great.
michalow's review against another edition
3.0
A weird little dreamscape of a novel. Chloe Aridjis writes wonderfully evocative scenes, hung on the faintest wisp of a plot.
nahanarts's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
sam_bizar_wilcox's review against another edition
3.0
Reading Sea Monsters is like being speaking with a friend whose estimation of herself is based entirely on her taste in music. Which is to say: Sea Monsters is a clever book, but a book so wrapped up in its own cleverness as to refuse to fully give the reader access to its inner machinations. It is a playlist-as-proxy to tangible insight, a novel written in shorthand unconsciously building fortress to protect it from the reader. Aridjis is talented, profound, and an immense literary force, but this novel showcases these strengths only from a distance, leaving me longing for whatever might be next, optimistic that by then she'll give us a closer view.
emilyinparis's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
‘The shoreline ran through every face, destroying some, enhancing others’
‘He had started out as a snag, a snag in the composition; from one moment to the next, there was no other way of putting it, he had begun to appear in my life back in the city. And since all appearances are ultimately disturbances, this disturbance needed investigating’
‘He was a sliver of black slicing through the so-called calm of the morning’
‘Far away a tectonic plate had decided to shift and with its shifting that Thursday morning it dispatched a telegram that swayed, toppled and razed all we’d taken for granted’
‘I would return to the Baudelaire poem, trying to approach it from different angles to see whether a little more light might enter the landscape’
‘I thought back on the Baudelaire poem and what it seemed to say, how to imagine travel is probably better than actually travelling since no journey can ever satisfy human desire, as soon as one sets out, fantasies get tangled in the rigging and dark birds of doubt begin their circling overhead’
‘The bold hum of voices, mostly male, rose and fell around me, everyone talking and thought-walking like Cantinflas, their voices expansive, compulsive, filling every inch of air. And soon I too felt charged, charged and restive and impervious to everything’
‘I said goodbye to the sleeping creatures and left the others to their fine white lines while El Putiflo recited his’
‘A white electricity ran through me, as if my system had been rewired by an evil technician’
‘I closed my eyes, slightly aroused by the water’s embrace, its invisible arms wrapping around my legs’
‘And yet I only saw these men from afar, they never came into focus, they remained patches of ink in the background’
‘Meanwhile the ocean continued to write and rewrite its long ribbon of foam, changing the contours of Tomás’ drawing’
‘I would think of the Zapotec girls, wondering on what stretch of beach, exactly, their corpses had been laid out’
‘the hammock sagged closer to the sand, its cords stretching and threatening to unravel, a drop in pressure, a rise in pressure, a riding of the waves, a journey to the seabed, a thrust back up to the surface, and something within me coiled tighter and tighter until it could coil no more abc then sprang undone. The merman remained with me until the early hours of the morning’
‘Gustavo in his lancha, while the merman sat at our table in the bar—in the past twenty-four hours they’d split into separate entities’
three_martini_lunch's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
vanessa_177's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
theodarling's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
2.0
I really struggled to get into this one — I think audio may have been the wrong format for me this time.
leanneymu's review
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
There's not a huge amount of plot in this book, and the characters also felt very detached and distant. In some ways this is purposeful, but it made it very hard for me to connect with the story. It is well written, but the pretentious style of narration (which makes sense for a 17 year old) also left me a bit cold. It just wasn't the right book for me, I don't think. My favourite parts where the details that made me think about living in Mexico, a place very different to where I live. Those were the parts that motivated me to keep reading.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death, Sexual content, and Violence