Scan barcode
A review by betweenbookends
Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis
3.5/5
And so begins this book that read like the waking hour from a lucid dream. A story tinged on the outer fringes with little oddities, and absurdities, but never quite straying into the realm of magical realism. Set in the blinding sunlit dusty streets of Mexico, Sea Monsters is a contemporary, off-beat story of a 17-year-old teenager, Luisa, who one day, decides to run away from home with a boy she only barely knows but is deeply infatuated with. No, it's not a love story. Far from it.
Sea Monsters isn't really about the plot or the characters. Rather it paints an intoxicating portrait of Mexican youth culture in the late 1990's, a slice of life story following two adolescents in the cusp of feigned maturity. It's narrated in the first person from Luisa's perspective but surprisingly you don't quite uncover her character all that well. There's a careless spontaneity to the narrative voice that feels both intimate and yet distanced.
It's stunningly written. Moments of utterly, breathtaking prose. The premise had immense potential, but somehow it never completely came to fruition. It felt lacking in depth in some respect. The motives of the different characters, the reasons behind their decisions never quite evident, so the story seemed to float on the surface, with the faintest logical thread holding it together. And that is the only complaint of significance that I have against this book. Towards the end there's this one line of self-introspection, that really is the same question that I, as the reader was asking as well.
Despite my criticism, I still really liked it and would recommend it. The atmosphere, the heat and relentless rains of Mexico, the ocean and all its vastness and the monsters that lurk deep beneath the waters, Zipolite, the beach of the dead, all come rivetingly alive on the page. The writing keeps you dumbfounded and guessing to an end that is maybe a little too neatly tied.
Imprisoned on this island, I would say, Imprisoned on this island. And yet I was no prisoner and this was no island.
And so begins this book that read like the waking hour from a lucid dream. A story tinged on the outer fringes with little oddities, and absurdities, but never quite straying into the realm of magical realism. Set in the blinding sunlit dusty streets of Mexico, Sea Monsters is a contemporary, off-beat story of a 17-year-old teenager, Luisa, who one day, decides to run away from home with a boy she only barely knows but is deeply infatuated with. No, it's not a love story. Far from it.
Sea Monsters isn't really about the plot or the characters. Rather it paints an intoxicating portrait of Mexican youth culture in the late 1990's, a slice of life story following two adolescents in the cusp of feigned maturity. It's narrated in the first person from Luisa's perspective but surprisingly you don't quite uncover her character all that well. There's a careless spontaneity to the narrative voice that feels both intimate and yet distanced.
It's stunningly written. Moments of utterly, breathtaking prose. The premise had immense potential, but somehow it never completely came to fruition. It felt lacking in depth in some respect. The motives of the different characters, the reasons behind their decisions never quite evident, so the story seemed to float on the surface, with the faintest logical thread holding it together. And that is the only complaint of significance that I have against this book. Towards the end there's this one line of self-introspection, that really is the same question that I, as the reader was asking as well.
Why Luisa? A question, an event, compressed into a fist, like a sentence compressed into an apostrophe that when released springs back to its original form.
Despite my criticism, I still really liked it and would recommend it. The atmosphere, the heat and relentless rains of Mexico, the ocean and all its vastness and the monsters that lurk deep beneath the waters, Zipolite, the beach of the dead, all come rivetingly alive on the page. The writing keeps you dumbfounded and guessing to an end that is maybe a little too neatly tied.