I just finished reading Samantha Hunt's The Seas and it's the kind of book that makes readers think for a long long time. At first I thought it was the sort of mythic fiction that plays around a bit with the myth (in this case mermaids) but settles into a story about a girl discovering who she really is and moving on from there.
Except it is not that kind of book at all.
This is a love story (partly) and a war story (slightly) and certainly a story about a mermaid (maybe). But definitely, more than anything, it is a story about grief and the grieving process.
"One night," I began and close my eyes, "my father, he was very handsome, he walked into the ocean. That was eleven years ago. He hasn't come back yet and even though the police found the place on the beach where my father's footprints disappeared into the water, they never found his body. So my mother and I have been waiting."
In the end, as much as it is about myth and mystery it is even more about deeply dark sorrow, and the struggle to see it through, to get to the other side, to get to the light.
What an amazing book.
Interestingly, because the story are quite different, while I was reading The Seas I kept thinking about Jane Mendelsohn's Innocence. The protagonists are both teenage girls, but they are vastly different in age and experience and also in the conflicts they are facing. The similarity can be found in the language, in way the books were written stylistically and also in the languid manner in which the stories unfold, in how even in moments of great action (both books open with questions and conflicts), still you read them as if in slow motion; the authors force you to slow down and savor each and every word.
The Seas is not the kind of book that I think teens would love though - the concerns of the characters just strike me as more of an adult sort (I could be wrong here, so please let me know if you think differently). Innocence is a first rate choice for teens however, and I'm adding it now to the You Should Read This Awards list for 2008. Don't forget to add your favorite adult titles that teens would love.
["The Mermaid" by John William Waterhouse, 1905.]
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February 5
2008
06:22 PM
Intrigued am I by your mention of and quasi-comparison to Innocence.