"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 (from the Introduction)
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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Samantha Hunt’s The Seas, her debut novel, won a National Book Foundation award for writers under thirty-five. She is also the author of Mr. Splitfoot, Dark, Dark: Stories, and The Invention of Everything Else. Hunt's writing has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney's, A Public Space, Tin House, Cabinet, among others.
“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
“Hunt's spare narrative is as mysterious and lyrical as a mermaid's song. The strands of her story are touched with magic, strange in the best possible way and very pleasurable to read.”
- Andrea Barrett
“The Seas is creepy and poetic, subversive and strangely funny, [and] a phenomenal piece of literature.”
- Michelle Tea
“Urgently real and magically unreal . . . A breathy, wonderful holler of a novel, deeply lodged in the ocean's merciless blue . . . [Hunt] sinks an anchor into the soul of its lost young protagonist.”
- The Village Voice
“The Seas reads as though . . . John Hawkes had sprouted Márquezian wings, Raymond Carver had lived to see Prozac proliferate. She has some of her tics, for sure--but they're palatable when tinged with the fabulous. . . . It's the book's emotional expressiveness . . . that ultimately breaks the mood's prescribed monotony and lofts it above its precursors.”
- The New York Observer
“To describe Samantha Hunt's entrancing first novel, The Seas, is to try to interpret a watery dream that pushes the boundaries between fiction and fantasy. . . . Hunt's nimbleness makes the idea of leaning toward mermaid fantasies enticing.”
- San Francisco Chronicle
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Shipping:
US$ 6.39
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Seller: WorldofBooks, Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom
Paperback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001855454
Quantity: 1 available
Seller: WorldofBooks, Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom
Paperback. Condition: Good. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine. Seller Inventory # GOR003836255
Quantity: 1 available