Customer Reviews

The Seas: A Novel

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
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Reviewed by Patricia D. Weisgerber for Small Spiral Notebook

Imagine that Hans Christian Anderson has finally reached his limit with the various `Disney-fied' adaptations of his story, "The Little Mermaid", and mentions his frustration to Winslow Homer, Charles Dickens and H.P. Lovecraft over drinks up in Heaven. All agree and contribute ideas for a re-write. And perhaps they've funneled their vision through Samantha Hunt, and, thus, her first novel, The Seas, might have been born.

Samantha Hunt writes as if her pen were a sable paintbrush. Though we never know the name of our heroine/protagonist, we see her plainly and vividly, a waif of a soul living in a northern seacoast town where `The highway only goes south from here'. With rocky coastal beaches, frozen water and not much else, a bleak future lies ahead for anyone unfortunate to live there. And while this young woman is aware of her salt-of-the-earth lineage, she has come to believe she's unlike anyone else in the town. She believes she is a mermaid.

The catalyst for this belief is her father's disappearance eleven years before when he walked into the ocean and never came back. While the rest of the town accepts this as suicide, the young woman's mother still waits for her missing husband to return. This, in turn, only strengthens the young woman's conviction. In her mind, she reasons that if her father is alive, then he must be a creature of the sea and, therefore, she must be a mermaid as he had commented many years before.

As with Anderson's mermaid, there is a prince, Jude, only he has been served a fate not unlike a character from a Dicken's tale. A veteran of the Gulf War, he is an alcoholic womanizer who carries a secret that is tearing him apart. Our young woman yearns for him and offers herself openly, only to be shunned. And, we all know the fate that awaits a mermaid who cannot win the love of her prince.

Hunt portrays the conflicts and confusion of the young heroine convincingly through the use of first person. There is an ethereal quality to her vibrant prose, which fluctuates between the earthly and mythical worlds of the main character's mind. Despite the mystical elements, the angst and the reality of the hard circumstances are always as sharp as the jagged rocks of a cliffwalk. The Seas is a mesmerizing story, one that draws you in like a soft September undertow and it's not until you feel the chill of the deep ocean that you realize how far from shore you are.

Sleeping in the bathtub on the third floor of the weathered house, where she can see the stars from the window above, a child pressed her ear to the drainpipe so she could hear her parents whispering all night. But one night, her father said, "I remember how the moon shines into the ocean and the pattern it makes on the sea floor" and her mother began to cry. She had never heard her mother cry before. Soon after, her father disappeared into the sea and mother and daughter spend their lives waiting for him to return.

Even as a young woman, the daughter never forgets how her father once told her she was a mermaid, a gift from the sea. Clinging to this small fantasy, the girl spins out a story where she exists in a separate reality, in the blue cocoon of ocean that gave her life.

An integral part of this intricate fantasy, the much older Jude steps out of the sea one day, almost a vision of her father, at least, close enough for an eighteen year old girl longing for his return. She, her mother and grandfather have kept a lonely vigil, waiting year after year for him to come home to them, unable to give up hope. Struggling to emerge from this still life as a mermaid, into a more functional reality, the young woman is beset on all sides by the presence and power of the sea, as it offers imprisonment or release. Propelled into her own future, the girl is at a critical impasse, brought about by her intense need for Jude to be all things, lover, father, savior, failure.

The author has a remarkable talent for description, drawing the reader into her images, such as the strange sounds of the deaf world, the inner workings of a lonely woman's heart and the incandescence of hope on the horizon. Hunt spills words like breadcrumbs through the forest... impossible not to follow. This is fiction as it was meant to be, visually stimulating and deeply satisfying, with an understanding of the inner lives of others, the deepest chambers of the human heart. Luan Gaines/ 2004.

"The Seas'" narrator is nineteen, a waif-like girl who, unable to move from adolescence to womanhood, believes herself to be a mermaid. When she was eight years-old, her father walked into the sea, never to be seen again. She and her mother often sit on the beach, near the ocean's edge where his footprints were last seen, watching - waiting for him to return. Wet footprints appear to her in the oddest places, convincing her that he has come back. He had told her that she was a mermaid - a gift from the sea. After all these years, she still believes him and reasons that if her father is alive, then he must be a creature of the sea and that she, his daughter, must be the same. And like the mermaids in Hans Christian Andersen's tale, and Friedrich de La Motte Fouque's "Undine," our lost young protagonist loves a man and longs for him to return her intense affections. Unlike the fairy tales, however, one assumes she is not dependent on this man's love to gain a mortal soul.

Jude, the man in question, is older, nearly twice her age. He returned from the Iraq War terribly changed, war-torn. After serving three years and seven months in the Army, he had decided to stay at the front a bit longer. He needed the money. He was finally evacuated for Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and shipped back to the States. The bleak, Northeastern seaside town where they live has nothing to offer him, nor anyone else really. He doesn't own a fishing boat, which is the only way to make money in the tiny hamlet. Our mermaid is certain that Jude, now a hard drinking, womanizing sailor, is her prince. Jude, however, has problems of his own. Never having fully recovered from the traumas of battle, he believes the young woman is forbidden to him. She is like a critical war secret he has been prohibited to reveal. "Like if I say your name or if I touch you, I'd get court-martialed, found guilty, and executed."

Ms. Hunt's narrative is sparse and somewhat random in nature, according to her protagonist's apparent whims. It almost reads like a personal journal, with chapter titles for each entry. A literary work, "The Seas" is hauntingly beautiful with lyrical, almost ethereal prose and filled with ocean imagery. An atmosphere of melancholy permeates, with mystical, fantastical elements. The young woman's angst, and the sorrows of her wounded warrior, wrench the heart. There is dark humor here also. "All mermaids do is swim around and kill sailors. Not a great job."

The characters are brilliantly portrayed, including the grandfather who is obsessed with typesetting a dictionary. He gives his granddaughter words and definitions to ponder throughout, and the story is filled with typographical games. He discovers a word in a Russian English dictionary, "razbliuto." He says there is no English equivalent. "The word means, the feelings one retains for someone he once loved," he explains, and challenges his listeners to come up with an English one word meaning. When everyone fails, the old man continues, "It's like the little house love moved out of, maybe a hermit crab moves in and carries the house across the floor of a tidal pool. The lover sees the old love moving and it looks like it's alive again." This is a poignant novel, sometimes almost painful. Don't let that put you off. "The Seas" mesmerizes. It is a fabulous tale and is so worth the read. I loved this book!

Samantha Hunt has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published in the anthology Trampoline, McSweeney's, Colorado Review, Jubilat, The Literary Review, The Iowa Review, Western Humanities Review, NewMediaPoets.com, and has appeared on NPR's "This American Life."
JANA

This is a remarkable novel. It's hard to believe that Samantha Hunt hasn't been writing novels for a long time, yet the (extremely attractive) woman on the bookjacket is clearly young.

As I read this book, "Emily Bronte" kept creeping into my mind. The ocean is hardly a moor, but Ms. Hunt owns her piece of the world every bit as thorouhly as Bronte did.

It's a haunting story, bound to end as it does, but full of surprises along the way. The (unnamed) woman at the center of the book is thoroughly sympathetic, even in her wildest flights of fancy.

Any reader willing to suspend disbelief for the length of this book will be thoroughly rewarded.

Poetic, visionary, symbolic and smooth, Samantha Hunt's The Seas, tells of a world where loneliness and isolation, and suffering and loss, go hand in hand. The line between the sea and land, between illusion and reality, is blurred in this beautiful and striking story of a young girl's search for love. Cleverly reworking Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid, Hunt presents a story that is almost magically unreal, yet is also firmly cemented in the harsh reality of everyday life.

The story is set in a far-northern stormy unnamed coastal hamlet where the inhabitants are hard-edged and rough, and where alcoholism has been for years the scourge and curse of the town. The 19-year-old narrator (we never learn her name) is an outsider and recluse. Picked on by her peers, she believes she's a mermaid. Her father walked into the ocean 11 years earlier and never came back, and her mother waits endlessly for him to reappear, while her grandfather obsesses over word dictionaries. She's also in love with a man called Jude. She fell in love with Jude when she was twelve years old and he was twenty-six.

From the beginning, it's obvious that this girl's perception of the world is very different from reality. She spends most of her time waiting - "waiting to grow up. Waiting for my father to return. Waiting for Jude. Waiting for something big to happen." She also possesses a kind of mental picture that brings life to inanimate objects: A rock, by the seashore becomes King Neptune, some wet footprints in the attic become her father, and in one instance, she frantically tries to prove she's a mermaid by breathing water into her lungs while in the bathtub.

Running parallel to her story is the story of Jude, a womanizing, hard drinking, and battle scarred Gulf War veteran. He recounts his tale of death and destruction as he sees his comrades-in-arms killed, and discovers the true, deadly cost of war. In her delusional world she begins to believe that Jude, who rises from the sea, is also her father. Jude remains her one and only true love, but you don't get to keep the feelings for someone you once loved. Once you've washed your hands of that person, all those feelings, "all that dirty water is washed out to sea." And mirroring the mermaid's tale - if Jude doesn't return her love, he has to die.

With its almost circular narrative, and its metaphorical themes, The Seas blasts the reader with some of the most gorgeous and kaleidoscopic images that one will ever read in literature. The sea of life constantly buffets and pummels this young girl. She remains on the seashore waiting and wishing for love, from Jude and from her long dead father, to give her the salvation and deliverance that she so desperately needs. Mike Leonard February 05.

Of course, we all measure success in our own strange way. but by my reckoning Samantha Hunt should consider this book a win. If I were only to judge this work on the mood it invokes, I would still rate it a 5. As a matter of fact, I'll give it five stars on mood invocation alone. Ms. Hunt is a witchscribe. And THE SEAS is a potion. I will never forget the look on my own face as I finished this one. My mouth was agape and I found I'd lost control of salivary function and production. I'll need a fresh copy of this one. And Ms. Hunt, if you are listening, I've read all the reviews on this page. You just have to know that some readers are never going to "get it." It's not their fault, or yours. Most assuredly not yours. As for the rest of us, we would like to encourage you to write for us another one.

This slim novel centers around a protagonist who thinks she's a mermaid. Living in a small coastal town in Maine, this book sets up the idea that the girl is either crazy or a mermaid. To enjoy this book you have to accept the author's premise and poetic license that leaves the truth purposely vague.

The author's voice is at times haunting, but at other times, her odd narrative style comes across as forced. This is a quick read, and Hunt's language is beautiful, strange, and provocative. I rated this novel 3 stars mostly for technical reasons. The plot and characterization are somewhat weak (or left purposely vague?) but the language and concept are interesting.

What I love most about this book is its insane romanticism - not insane because it's romantic, but romantic because it's insane. Hunt's narrator has a special idealism in the face of imminent tragedy, and has convinced herself that she is a mermaid. Living with her mother and dictionary-writing grandfather in an isolated coastal town, a 19-year old girl is still mourning the loss of her father, who one day walked into the sea never to return. The desolate landscape of the story is spattered with her doomed love affair with a (much older) Gulf War vet and her desire to escape. THE SEAS is unbelievable, and unforgettable.

Last evening I started and whizzed completely through The Seas by Samantha Hunt. So beautiful. It's about a 19-year old young woman who lives in a remote area on the sea. The exact location isn't given, but we know:

"There aren't many roads out of town, which explains why so few people ever leave."

The young woman, never named, is deeply in love with a man named Jude, fourteen years older than she is. He's been off to war in Iraq when the story starts, returning a changed and quiet man. She'd fallen in love before he left, sending him letters while he was away, though, unfortunately for her he'd already decided she was far too young for him. That didn't keep him from continuing to see her, on a friendship basis. He enjoyed her company while realizing full well her love for him was all-consuming.

To the reader it's heartbreaking knowing how pure her love is, how unconditional, how desperately she yearns for him, and all the while he refuses. Even more sadly ironic, the young woman is an outcast in the tiny town. Jude is the only person outside her family who'll associate with her:

"I don't want to be from here because most of the people in this town think of me as a mold or a dangerous fungus that might infect their basements. I am the town's bad seed. I am their rotten heart.'

Another complication, the young woman's mind is unbalanced. She believes she's a mermaid, and that consummating her love for Jude would necessarily lead to his death, as it does in fairy tales. Yet her love is stronger than her fear. In a cruel twist of fate, her own father was lost at sea, her mother also holding vigil for a man she'll never see again, who cannot love her back despite her all-consuming passion:

"She doesn't have much interest in men because she is still in love with my father even though he has been gone for eleven years."

The two women are very alike, and, as often happens when two people are too much alike, this has a big impact on their relationship. Each sees the other as living for a dream that can never be realized, forgetting the same is true of herself. Each loves the other, but there is a wedge driven between them. It's an uneasy love, though one it seems impossible to break. Each inadvertantly hurts the other, and the mother isn't the only one who desperately misses the young woman's father:

"These are the parts of him I find impossible to cut myself loose from. They are beautiful qualities. But beauty is heavy, and though I'm young I am getting tired from carrying around the bits and shreds of my father's beauty."

Pain is everywhere in this novel. And while it may sound as though this book is too sad to bear, at the same time it's too beautiful for words. Nothing I can say about it does it justice; my comments are but a pale reflection of the original. The ending I found shocking. I've read some books that have blindsided me, but that isn't the norm. Once I finished I realized it had come full circle, the ending expanding on the otherwise puzzling beginning, making sense only in retrospect. Even then, it's a strange ending, one impossible to guess.

In a way the book reminds me of Jane Urquhart's novel Away, impossible love set in a seafaring location. If you feel - as I do - Wuthering Heights is a romantic novel, you'll probably love The Seas. So much about these books is similar, enough I have to wonder how much influence Brontė's book had on Hunt's. They feel so alike.

These gloomy, rainy days are well suited to reading The Seas. Sadness, love without hope, intensity of emotion. The combination is perfect. Again, I can't over-emphasize this book's beauty. The prose dazzles. If this book doesn't make the shortlist I'll be furious.

- Lisa Guidarini, NBCC

"The Seas" is a brilliant blend of fairy tale, dry wit, psychology & travel guide wrapped up like an exquisite poem. It is simultaneously hilarious and tragic. I recommend this smart, lingering story above any book I've read, ever.