Customer Reviews

The Odd Sea

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

The most consistent comment found in other reviews of this book is that "it will stay with you". And it will. "The Odd Sea" is by turns sorrowful and uplifting, but ultimately it is just about dealing. About living one's life in the face of the pain, frequently unexplainable, that comes into every life.

As the reader follows Phillip's ongoing, quietly desperate, search for the whereabouts of his lost brother, we see all the characters deal with tragedy in their own way. Eventually, we see Phillip come to grips with his grief.

"The Odd Sea" is a short novel, with simple, yet elegant, prose. I read it in just a few hours. However, its moving narrative will stay with me much longer; it is one of the best novels I have read in the last five years.

At the heart of this gem of a novel lies a mystery. Sixteen-year-old Ethan Shumway walks down the driveway one spring morning and simply disappears. His family and friends naturally launch an all-out search for him, but what ensues is less of a "search story" than an exploration of the nature of absence and the way absent people and things are carried with us through our lives. The author's empathy for his characters becomes the conduit through which we explore this problem in various stages of grief ranging from to denial, to rage, to heartache, to resignation, and ultimately to acceptance. The level of acceptance varies from character to character, and author Reiken paints an accurate portrait of the spectrum of responses that result for the many vividly realized characters who fill the pages of this book. Ethan's mother, for instance, becomes so depressed she requires hospitalization. His father has something of a spiritual awakening, in which he channels his grief into the lost art of timber frame house building. The teenage narrator, Philip, seems somehow both wise and unconscious; while he eloquently chronicles the varying reactions to Ethan's disappearance, it's his own unwillingness to face the grisly reality of what probably did happen to his talented older brother that comes to affect the reader most. A bit like the narrator in Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of Day, Philip's perspective remains limited, though the reader's perspective with regard to what may or may not have happened to Ethan is anything but limited, becoming almost encyclopedic due to Philip's meticulous, even if at times "unseeing" chronicling. Philip's point of view is not quite unreliable, but more an innocent standpoint that both resonates and haunts with its blind spots. Overall The Odd Sea is a deceptively mature work: striking in its understatement, succinct in its complexity, economical yet rich in its presentation. I highly recommend this book.

What a book! I was taken by the description on the back cover. For once I was right to trust my instincts. As soon as I read a page, I could not put this novel down! Reiken's voice is pitch perfect, and the story carries tremendous amounts of emotion while never once becoming sappy or sentimental. The pacing of the novel is so carefully timed that we follow the narrator Philip Shumway through all the stages of loss and we feel everything with him, step by step, and come away with the same quiet, ultimately uplifting resolve. Beautiful sense of family dynamics. Just an absolutely wonderful book that EVERYONE should read.

Some books you fly through and never think of again. There are others that you finish reluctantly, wishing that they would never end. Then, there are those rare few that you put down with a combination of regret and relief. This is one of the last ... a book that moved me to the point of that seeming contradiction. I wanted it to go on forever, yet was relieved to be free of its emotional yoke. A truly powerful book that is destined to haunt with meloncholy each of its readers.

For weeks, this novel sat on my bookshelf, unnoticed and unassuming. A few days ago, I picked it up because it was on my summer reading list and my English teacher had reccommended it to me. I am very glad I did.

The Odd Sea by Frederick Reiken is a wonderful story about the effects of grief on a family and the power of letting go. The story is beautifully crafted, following Philip Shumway's 5-year journey to try to make sense of the disapperance of his older brother Ethan. Along the way, he sees the effects of his brother's disapperance on his depressed mother and distant father. He recieves new perspectives on the situation from his three sisters- brash, bitchy Amy, no-nonsense, understanding Halley, and naive, bubbly Dana. And he finally begins to understand what he never knew about Ethan's life, particularly about his relationships with his girlfriend Melissa and his mentor Victoria, as well as his love for art and the guitar.

I was expecting to see many parallels to Homer's epic The Odyssey, and at first, I couldn't find them. After a while, I began to realize that this novel is not about the physical journey, but the mental and emotional one. Frederick Reiken has created a gem of a story with real characters in a vivid setting. I became engrossed in the story within just a few pages and couldn't put it down. If you enjoyed The Lovely Bones and want another perspective on the effects of death on a family, I would wholeheartedly reccommend this novel.

It's rare that a book possesses both the intellectual complexity and the depth of emotion present in The Odd Sea. Yet this book seems to have it all. Most importantly, the characters are strong and the story so compelling that the novel grabs you by page 3 and won't let you go until you've stayed up all night to finish it. The story revolves around a 16 year old boy's disappearance and is loosely based on The Odyssey by Homer. Narrator Philip remarks that his father, a sometimes storyteller, "managed to cover everything: absence, distance, longing, hope, return." So does this book, in ways both moving and profound. The Odd Sea is a masterful piece of fiction. I am tempted to call it "perfect."

I can't believe it took me this long to find The Odd Sea by Frederick Reiken. It makes me wonder what publishers are doing these days, spending time to promote all the junky stuff and not enough on books like this one. Phillip Shumway, the novel's youthful narrator, tells the story of the five years following his older brother Ethan's disappearance in seven well crafted chapters. Though Ethan remains absent, he becomes a thoroughly real, thoroughly felt presence in the novel. And because he never appears, nobody gets any easy answers. Every character (the whole Shumway clan of Phillip, three sister, mother and father, plus Ethan's girlfriend Melissa and mentor Tori) must come to terms with the loss in his or her own particular sometimes idiosyncratic ways. That's really what this book is about, finding ways to cope with irreversible loss. But if you're worried this book will be depressing, don't be. Of course there are sad and emotional parts, but Philip is also hilarious, due to his unwavering obsession with finding Ethan. You can't help liking him even when he starts to drive other characters crazy. I have the feeling this book will be around for a long while.

What a joy to discover a wonderful new writer. I'm just surprised I hadn't heard about Frederick Reiken sooner. He seems to be doing something that very few writers do these days. He tells intelligent, carefully crafted tales that are also suffused with deep emotion, so that the experience of reading is at once both physical and intellectual. This novel can work both on both the literal and metaphorical levels. It presents the reality of a family grappling with loss and at the same time the absent boy at the center of the story looms as a resonant symbol. The same wondrous adolescent point-of-view present in Reiken's recent New Yorker story "The Ocean" is also in evidence here. I'll look forward to whatever he writes next.

I picked up the book quite randomly at the local book store. The first time I had just picked up a contemporary novel and bought it. I'm a college student, and can identify with Philip at times. I did think the language used probably should have been beyond Philip, but who is to say it's not a retrospective look? The book touched me more than I thought it would. I found it to be a quick and really good read, but what really hit me was the coming of age undertones. Reading as Philip struggles with letting go of his past, and childhood reminded me of such struggles.

Reiken offers some interesting discussion on art and artists in the book, and I found the family's responses to the the loss and developments quite believable as best as I can empathise.

Overall, I recommend it, it made me think more than I would have thought, and a lot of the cover praise seemed accurate to me.

i was hooked right from the start by two things- the start of a great story and great writing. this book was simple,subtle, engrossing, spiritual, and intense all in one. that is no easy task!! several times as i closed the book for the evening i said "wow" as i put the book down. i wish frederick reiken luck on two levels- 1.great sucess so as many as possible can "get" his writing/storytelling. & 2. on a selfish level i wish him sucess however it comes just so i can take in more of his work. ENJOY!!!!!!!!