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meeshreads's review against another edition
4.0
This book was beautiful written, and I enjoyed Luisa's ultra dreamy descriptions and imaginings. I loved the very last sentence so much. But I expected to love this book and overall I finished it feeling a little bit let down.
cmoo053's review against another edition
4.0
All thoughts on this need to be prefaced with the understanding that I have a very high tolerance for plotlessness in novel. Sea Monsters is exactly that, essentially plotless. A teenage girl decides to run away to the coast in Mexico, with a boy she barely knows. What happens to her there, or what doesn’t really happen, is not the point. Aridjis is a deeply poetic writer. This is a novel full of beautiful description, and astute observation of both people and the natural world. Although many of the things observed or analysed turn out to be nothing, this is the beauty of this novel. It is about the pursuit of magic in this world, and just as the illusion of one trick dissolves, another appears before us. In the end, if we find the magic in the moments we live, it doesn’t matter how much of it is real or not. I was entranced.
literarymarvel's review against another edition
4.0
Catapult was kind enough to send me a galley of SEA MONSTERS, a novel about a teenage girl, Luisa, as she becomes obsessed with a strange boy named Tomas and eventually runs away with him to the seaside town of Zipolite in Oaxaca. There, the two drift apart, and Luisa becomes enraptured by the strangers who dot the Beach of the Dead.
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But the main craft of the novel is in all of the strange and mesmeric transgressions of Luisa and the mysterious ways in which strangers shape our lives. Aridjis’ writing is poetic and strange, but it moves well and she has a talent for understanding how the minute things in a person’s life affect who they are.
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But the main craft of the novel is in all of the strange and mesmeric transgressions of Luisa and the mysterious ways in which strangers shape our lives. Aridjis’ writing is poetic and strange, but it moves well and she has a talent for understanding how the minute things in a person’s life affect who they are.
sunsick's review against another edition
4.0
You can have all of the Edge of Seventeen nonsense the culture from Stevie Nicks, to Janis Ian to Hailee Seinfeld, will feed you , but no one seems to have hit just as right as Chloe Aridjis has in her story of young Luisa who runs away from home in Roma, Mexico City with Tomas, a boy she barely know or subsequently cares about to end up in the beach town of Zipolite outside of Oaxaca. Crazy teenage decisions are made including snorting seemingly endless cocaine spirals, pursuing a troupe of Ukrainian dwarfs who have escaped from a traveling circus, taking life guidance from a Baudelaire poem (her father's favorite), accepting the kindness and drinks offered by strangers at a bar, though not any meals with meat, and sleeping on an uncomfortable hammock at the beach. Our heroine Louisa has a vivid and interesting imagination, but never chooses to call home. Fever dreams often bore, but not when as well-written as this one. Kudos to Aridjis and 2020 Penn-Faulkner winning opus.
jessicafulton's review against another edition
3.0
I can appreciate the beautiful language used but this book was not for me
catdad77a45's review against another edition
3.0
Although readable, and easily knocked out in a day, this just left me feeling kind of 'meh'. The story just ambles along and I'm not quite sure what it was trying to say - or even if there WAS any point. And although some of Aridjis' prose was quite lovely, at almost no point was I convinced it was from the mind of a seventeen year old runaway.
tashadandelion's review against another edition
3.0
This is a pretty typical example of a 200-page work of lovingly-crafted prose that is for some inscrutable reason passed off as a novel in high literary circles. There is no real plot here, but plenty of interesting internal ruminations from an intellectual teen on walkabout with a ne'er-do-well pseudo-boyfriend she only recently met. I found it easy enough to read, but it's not my usual cup of tea. I respect the author's way with words, however, and thank her for making me go look up various interesting side topics, like Klaus Nomi, and Zipolite, Mexico, among other things.
featherbooks's review against another edition
4.0
Another one of those dreamy books with considerable navel-gazing that keeps my interest but I'm not sure why. The narrator is seventeen and runs away from home and family with a mysterious, unresponsive man to Zipolite, a Oaxacan beach town with cosmic properties in search of a missing circus troupe of Ukranian dwarfs. Abandoning her companion for the most part, she takes up with a mysterious, unresponsive merman whom she meets nightly for drinks and one-sided conversations. I think of books by Olivia Laing or Deborah Levy in [b:Hot Milk|26883528|Hot Milk|Deborah Levy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1461535043l/26883528._SY75_.jpg|46932640] or Laura van den Berg [b:The Third Hotel|36348514|The Third Hotel|Laura van den Berg|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1512550273l/36348514._SY75_.jpg|58029865]which I've read recently and wonder why I'm drawn to the Great Ennui of these writers.