Overview
Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea who or where he is. A note instructs him to see a Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is undergoing yet another episode of acute memory loss that is a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric's been in Dr. Randle's care for two years -- since the tragic death of his great love, Clio, while the two vacationed in the Greek islands.But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by "the first Eric Sanderson," a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him.
The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love. It will dazzle you, it will move you, and will leave an indelible imprint like nothing you have read in a long time.
About the Author
STEVEN HALL was born in Derbyshire, England, in 1975. He studied fine art at Sheffield Hallum University. His "Stories for a Phone Book" appeared in New Writing 13 (Picador 2005). The Raw Shark Texts is his first novel. For more information about the author, please visit: www.myspace.com/StevenHallBooks www.TheRawSharkTexts.com
Synopsis
The Raw Shark Texts, called “clever, playful . . . sharp and clear” by the Los Angeles Times and “a horror-dystopic-philosophical mash-up” by the New York Times Magazine, is a novel unlike any other. Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea who or where he is. Instructed by a mysterious note to visit a Dr. Randle, Eric learns that the agony of losing the love of his life in a scuba-diving accident three years before has destroyed his memory. But there may be more to the story, or it may be a different story altogether. As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left in the house by “the first Eric Sanderson,” a staggeringly different explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges, and he and the reader embark on a quest to recover the truth and escape the remorseless predatory forces that threatens to devour him. The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscopic novel about the magnitude of love and the devastating effect of losing that love.
Independent
The book justifies the hype. . . . An innovative, postmodern, metafictional novel . .. The most original reading experience of the year . . . A literary novel that's more out there than most science fiction . . . Genuinely isn't like anything you have ever read before, and could be as big an inspiration to the next generation of writers as Auster and Murakami have been to Hall.--(Matt Thorne, Independent)
Editorials
From the Publisher
“Exhilarating.” Entertainment Weekly“Rousingly inventive.” The Washington Post
“Unforgettable fiction.” Playboy
“A thriller that will haunt you.” GQ
“Sharp and clear writing on the edge of the form.” Los Angeles Times
Tyler Knox
It's all a lot of fun, yet there is also a surprising emotional resonance in seeing Second Eric, like Beckett's Krapp with his tapes, reading and rereading First Eric's journals as he obsesses over the experiences that the Ludovician has chomped out of his head. And to hear Second Eric's voice take on the snap of his predecessor's is especially satisfying.— The Washington Post
Times Literary Supplement
An avant-garde thriller in which these devil-fish of the unconscious somehow escape the symbolic realm, or rather, we join them on their side of the border. . . . Ian is a splendid character: a self-important misanthropist, invariably with 'thundery disgust and disappointment all over his big flat ginger face.' . . . The novel's great virtue is its structure. . . . Information is released in pieces, like time-release drugs in a capsule, their order derived from the progressive revelation of truths rather than the forward march of events. . . . The Raw Shark Texts unfolds not in sleek cyberspace, but inside the post-Freudian human self, with its layers, its pungent humours, its debris left over from construction, and its monsters of the deep. . . . Jaws meets Alice in Wonderland.--(Sarah Bakewell, Times Literary Supplement (London))Independent
The book justifies the hype. . . . An innovative, postmodern, metafictional novel . .. The most original reading experience of the year . . . A literary novel that's more out there than most science fiction . . . Genuinely isn't like anything you have ever read before, and could be as big an inspiration to the next generation of writers as Auster and Murakami have been to Hall.--(Matt Thorne, Independent)The Guardian
Steven Hall's The Raw Shark Texts is a psychological thriller with shades of Memento and The Matrix and the fiction of Mark Danielewski; page-turning, playful and chilling by turns, it explores the construction of identity through the adventures of an amnesiac who is guided by letters from his former self and menaced by a conceptual shark. --Justine JordanPublishers Weekly
Hall's debut, the darling of last year's London Book Fair, is a cerebral page-turner that pits corporeal man against metaphysical sharks that devour memory and essence, not flesh and blood. When Eric Sanderson wakes from a lengthy unconsciousness, he has no memory. A letter from "The First Eric Sanderson" directs him to psychologist Dr. Randle, who tells Eric he is afflicted with a "dissociative condition." Eric learns about his former life—specifically a glorious romance with girlfriend Clio Aames, who drowned three years earlier—and is soon on the run from the Ludovician, a "species of purely conceptual fish" that "feeds on human memories and the intrinsic sense of self." Once he hooks up with Scout, a young woman on the run from her own metaphysical predator, the two trek through a subterranean labyrinth made of telephone directories (masses of words offer protection, as do Dictaphone recordings), decode encrypted communications and encounter a series of strange characters on the way to the big-bang showdown with the beast. Though Hall's prose is flabby and the plethora of text-based sight gags don't always work (a 50-page flipbook of a swimming shark, for instance), the end result is a fast-moving cyberpunk mashup of Jaws, Mementoand sappy romance that's destined for the big screen. 125,000 first printing; $150,000 promo. (Apr.)
Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.