Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis

In spite of its lively premise and its lovely cover art Sea Monsters is one of the most lacklustre books I’ve read this year. Thankfully, Sea Monsters is a slight novel, just around 200 pages. Then again, those 200 pages are a drag.

The summary for this novel is somewhat misleading as it promises the kind of surreal story that one could expect from authors such as Kevin Wilson or Samanta Schweblin. Sadly, Chloe Aridjis novel is far from being an inventive or subversive coming-of-age tale of a runaway girl. This work is tedious, uninspired…it lacks a spark. The traveling troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs mentioned in its summary are a mere red herring. They capture the readers’ attention but it turns out that their presence in the story is just a gimmick. Our narrator decides to run away with a tall lanky dark-haired boy who isn’t like other boys. She says she wants to find this troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs who seem to have ‘escaped’ from the circus they were employed by. The narrative consists in our protagonist having not so deep thoughts about life. Her tiresome and affected navel-gazing dominates her narrative. She relates her experiences or the conversations she with others in a way that adds little to no immediacy to her story (because of this the book earns the criticism of ‘too much telling, not enough showing’). Our main character mopes about nothing in particular. She seems vaguely intrigued by a guy she nicknames ‘the merman’ but this storyline lacks the zing of Schweblin’s ‘The Merman’ short story (here the guy is not an actual mermaid).
The 1980s setting seems to take precedence over character or story developed. While I appreciate the references to the genres, bands, and artists of the time (I mean, even Klaus Nomi gets a mention) they did not make up for the novel’s many shortcomings.

This book is just ‘meh’, lukewarm. I didn’t hate it, I didn’t like it, it didn’t really inspire any strong feelings in me. It was occasionally mildly frustrating but other than that…I just did not care for it.
Nevertheless, as with any of my less-than-enthusiastic reviews, I encourage you check out some of the more positive reviews.

my rating: ★★☆☆☆

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