Sea Monsters | 
so-soI am really unsure about this book. It was so strange but it also felt very enchanting or disenchanting. I read it for my quarantine book club and I love the beach scenes and the haunting feelings it had however I don‘t know if it would be a book I would recommend to people. I am happy I read it as I think I learned something however it is very peculiar.
pickSea Monsters is 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 doesn‘t, is not the point. Aridjis is a deeply poetic writer. 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.
A #ownvoices book set in Mexico or Central America #readharder2019
“I just couldn‘t imagine relaxing one hundred percent, and just to guarantee I kept a grip on things and didn‘t let down my guard or allow matters to get to picturesque, I held on to the one book I‘d brought with me, Lautréamont‘s Les Chants de Maldoror.”
“...But that was the problem with mysterious people, I explained, once you spend time with them they are not so mysterious after all...”
“I closed my eyes, slightly aroused by the water‘s embrace, its invisible arms wrapping around my legs and asked myself where the merman was at that hour. Maybe he too was in the ocean, at a different point along, and we were connected by the same waves that brushed my body and then his.”
so-soMeh.
pickSomewhere between a pick and so-so. A quick read. 17-year-old Luisa runs away from home in Mexico City and heads to an Oaxacan beach with her new friend/boyfriend Tomas. They hang out and drift apart. They eat and drink beer. After 7? 10? Days her father finds her and she very willingly goes home. The end. Started off promising but I felt it went nowhere. Maybe I am too old for coming of age books.
2/3
