The Seas
Published on 22. July 2010
208 pages
978-1-84901-625-4 (ISBN)
Description
"The Seas took me back to how I felt as a kid, when you're newly falling in love with literature, newly shocked by its capacity to cast a spell..." Maggie Nelson
"[It] blew me away because of the beauty of the language . . . I found myself highlighting about 85% of the book for the language. It is so beautifully written" Jodi Picoult
Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She's often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.
True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior. The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend.
With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.
"[It] blew me away because of the beauty of the language . . . I found myself highlighting about 85% of the book for the language. It is so beautifully written" Jodi Picoult
Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She's often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid.
True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior. The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend.
With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.
Reviews / Votes
[It] blew me away because of the beauty of the language . . . I found myself highlighting about 85% of the book for the language. It is so beautifully written. * Jodi Picoult, Festive Recommendations, Belfast Telegraph * One of the most distinctive and unforgettable voices I have read in years. This book will linger . . . in your head for a good long time. -- Dave Eggers An aqueous affair, flooded with water themes . . . Hunt's writing is free of affectation and carries surprising conviction. * The New Yorker * [An] entrancing first novel. * San Francisco Chronicle. * Hunt presents a convincing portrayal of youthful confusion...Such gray, Chekhovian moments mark Hunt as a writer to watch. * Time Out New York * Urgently real and magically unreal...a breathy, wonderful holler of a novel, deeply lodged in the ocean's merciless blue. * The Village Voice * [With] language at once poetic and precise...The result is a ravishing, utterly unique read. * Elle.com * Samantha Hunt is an exciting find - a fresh original voice ... a fantastical love story ... literary gold ... It should appeal to fans of The Time Traveller's Wife and Donna Tartt. * Sunday Express * Intelligent, compassionate ... beautifully conjured. * Daily Telegraph * Characters are beautifully drawn and the world Hunt creates is quite haunting. * TheBookbag.co.uk * Keeps the reader consistently surprised and enthralled * Books Quarterly * A gripping tale * Observer * Clever and intense. * Guardian * A fantastical coming of age story. * Irish Times *More details
Edition
Digital original
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Edition type
Digital original
File size
0,29 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-84901-625-4 (9781849016254)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
Samantha Hunt was born in 1971 in Pound Ridge, New York. The Seas is her debut novel - it won the National Book Foundation's award for writers under 35 and was voted one of the Top 27 Books of 2004 by the Voice Literary Supplement. She is also the author of The Invention of Everything Else which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2009.
Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Esquire, A Public Space, Cabinet, Tin House, Seed Magazine, New York Magazine, Blind Spot, Harper's Bazaar, and The Believer. Her work has been translated into seven languages.
Samantha Hunt teaches writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, Esquire, A Public Space, Cabinet, Tin House, Seed Magazine, New York Magazine, Blind Spot, Harper's Bazaar, and The Believer. Her work has been translated into seven languages.
Samantha Hunt teaches writing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
