Valerie L. (vallipow) reviewed on 5/7/2009 + 40 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 2

This is an amazing, amazing book, the kind of book that makes me keep reading novels. In literature, unlike non-fiction, truly ANYTHING can happen, and Steven Hall's "The Raw Shark Texts" proves that in fiction, a good writer can craft a believable world with believable characters doing absolutely impossible things in a believable way. "The Raw Shark Texts" introduces a modern-day England where a small group of people surround Eric Sanderson (the second), a young man who awakens one day who doesn't know where he is or how he gets there. He has no memory of himself or of his past. Guided by letters written by Eric Sanderson (the first), Eric (the second) seeks the truth of his life while avoiding being killed by a very strange, and very real, shark, a shark made up of words and ideas rather than of cartilage and nerves. This book is written in a very straightforward and down-to-earth way. Eric realizes that he is not in a dream world. He comes to understand that he is not insane. He knows that he is not on drugs. He finds that he, and he alone, is being pursued by a man-eating shark, but a shark unlike any that Eric has ever heard of, and a type I've ever read about before. By the way, "The Raw Shark Texts" is also a wonderful love story, or perhaps two wonderful love stories (you'll have to read it to make up your own mind). I have never read anything that gave me goosebumps both for the quality of the prose and for the tension in the narrative.

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