The Seas : Book review

Book review

Title: The Seas

Author: Samantha Hunt

Genre: Nautical Fiction

'The Seas' tells an interesting tale of an adolescent girl in a coastal village who is convinced she is a mermaid. The word mermaid is bound to trigger ideas about the possibility of this book containing elements of magical realism which isnt exactly the case. 

Our protagonist is an unnamed 19 year old girl who lives in a town infused with gossip, deceit and alcoholism. The narrator's father has disappeared into the ocean. While waiting for him, she stumbles upon a much older man named Jude who walks out of the sea. She falls in love with him while he goes off to serve in the Iraq war. The distance doesn deter her love for him and she adopts several measures to ease her pain on land which eventually lands her in prison. 

One of the strengths of the book is the powerful voice of the narrator. While there are times she sounds younger than her age, she is bold and unpretentious. Whether it comes to expressing her love for Jude, her sexual desires, or describing her vivid water infused world. Despite facing tragedy, she does not appear pitiful or passive. And yet, there lies a certain vulnerability in her manifested through her longing for her father.

 The first person point of view lends well to the unreliable narrator our protagonist is. We experience her world through her eyes, oscillating between the blurred lines of reality and delusion. There are times you are compelled to believe the narrator and times when you are forced to think that she is possibly insane. The author explores how trauma tends to affect a person's ability to see their world. A defense mechanism in the form of denial leads to them clinging on to the ray of hope. We see this when the narrator and her mother thrive on the hope their father may return-one of the reasons they never leave their village. 

The structure is interesting as the author has divided the chapters into vignettes. It appears like fragments lending again to the concept of unreliable narrator. The prose is poetic and the author uses imagery and symbols to cater to this retelling of a fairytale. She touches upon themes of grief, longingness and trauma. The dynamics between the characters touch upon the mother daughter relationship and also the narrator's relationship with her grandfather which influences her view of the world. Her fascination for a much older man tends to remind us of other literary works like Strange Weather in Tokyo, Winter in Sokcho and Walking on a ceiling. The female protagonist's obsession for an older man is often seen to stem from the absence of father figures in their lives. 

The Seas makes us root for the narrator. Reading this book gives us a feeling of having a first hand experience of a tidal wave. It's intriguing how the author has managed to pack so many elements in this compact novel-right from the Iraq war, complex relationships, and myths.