As the title implies, Hunt's first novel is a sea story featuring a narrator who fancies herself a mermaid. It's also an odd and fabulous tale in the true sense of the word, a fable based purely on imagination and legend. In a gloomy coastal town, the 19-year-old narrator waits for her father to return from the ocean he walked into 11 years before. Although presumed dead by the townspeople, he is not dead to his daughter (nor perhaps to his wife). He returns to her in visions and reminds her that as a mermaid, she belongs in the ocean, just as he does, and that she needs to join him there. There is a third person in this triangle-Jude, a part-time fisherman and Gulf War vet who is more than twice the narrator's age. In a mystical sort of attraction, the narrator falls for Jude at first sight, waiting for him to return her feelings and to come back completely from the war. While at first he is the playful, protective older brother, hesitant to get involved, his feelings deepen over time. A cross between Rosamunde Pilcher's Coming Home and R.A. Dick's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, this is a beautifully unconventional story. Recommended for academic and medium or larger public libraries.-Lisa Nussbaum, Dauphin Cty. Lib. Syst., Harrisburg, PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
A poetic, almost successful debut tale of a small-town girl who's in love-in about equal parts-with the sea, her absent father, and a man named Jude. That the narrator often seems younger than her 19 years may be due partly to the influence of the seedy, parochial, decrepit little seaside town where she lives-the town her father mysteriously disappeared from 11 years back, leaving wife and daughter to catch as catch can. "We don't move away," she tells us, " . . . because we are waiting for him to return." And the wait, it's hard for a reader to deny, feels long as the girl aches incessantly not only for her father but for the love of 33-year-old Jude, whom she met once when she was wading in the sea-and Jude was coming out of it, thus reminding her of her father, who may (not an absolute certainty) have disappeared into it. Jude and the girl become fast friends but not lovers-nor, however much she yearns for sex with him, do they become lovers later, in the novel's present time, after Jude has gone to and returned from the first Iraq war. After Iraq, he's different-inward, melancholy, "war-torn." And sexually unresponsive. And so things are frozen, halted. Only as Hunt turns farther toward a lyric magic realism where the real, symbolic, and imaginary blend, is it possible for the story's resolution to occur. The trouble is, though, that all hangs on Jude's war traumas, which have an inserted and prepackaged feel, and, further, don't provide change but only shock. Dream, madness, error, and sorrow, plus another strange and magical encounter, will at last bring everything to an end, if not a close. Intelligent, complex, and ambitious, with symbols and structure that have life and movement,while the psychology at the base of it all remains stubbornly-and unsatisfyingly-inert.
"Spare, elegant, affecting . . . The Seas is a testament to doomed romanticism, to the ways in which we hang our hopes on impossible things becoming possible."
"In this dazzling, wrenching novel, Hunt challenges traditional mermaid mythology and constructs an unforgettable story about young womanhood in the process."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"An aqueous affair, flooded with water themes . . . Hunt's writing is free of affectation and carries surprising conviction."
"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."
"The Seas is creepy and poetic, subversive and strangely funny, [and] a phenomenal piece of literature."
"This modern feminist fairytale reels you in with its strangeness and beauty and gives voice to the dark realities of alcoholism, mental illness and the everyday messiness of life."
"It’s hard to imagine that a book so brief could tackle the Iraq war, grief over the loss of a parent, the longing for freedom, an enthrallment with the ocean, loneliness, sexual awakening, faith, and etymology, all in less than 200 pages, but Samantha Hunt has done it, and done it well."
"Hunt blends myth and reality — if her father is from the sea, our narrator wonders, then isn't such magic in her blood as well? — and ends up with something truly stunning."
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
“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 (2004 "Top Shelf" selection)
“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
“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
Samantha Hunt narrates her own novel featuring a nameless narrator who descends into madness. The story is told from the perspective of a 19-year-old woman who lives in a fishing town rife with alcoholism and biting cold, known only as “up north.” Hunt pours herself into the narration. The protagonist pours her heart out as she tells listeners all her wants and desires. She loves a man she cannot have, and as she explains this, her heart breaks even more—to the point that she can barely utter anything. She is so convinced that she is a mermaid that the listener begins to believe it as well. This haunting audiobook begs listeners to listen again for the clues about what is real and what is fantasy. A.R.F. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Samantha Hunt narrates her own novel featuring a nameless narrator who descends into madness. The story is told from the perspective of a 19-year-old woman who lives in a fishing town rife with alcoholism and biting cold, known only as “up north.” Hunt pours herself into the narration. The protagonist pours her heart out as she tells listeners all her wants and desires. She loves a man she cannot have, and as she explains this, her heart breaks even more—to the point that she can barely utter anything. She is so convinced that she is a mermaid that the listener begins to believe it as well. This haunting audiobook begs listeners to listen again for the clues about what is real and what is fantasy. A.R.F. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
