Book Review: A Writer's Opinion

 

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Erin Morgenstern is a young, good-looking, talented multi-media artist who has written two best-selling fantasy novels, so I ought to be intensely jealous of her. However, there is something so magical about her writing that it just makes me feel waves of warmth.  I can even forgive the fact that she seems to be into horoscopes and drinks a lot of tea.

           

I read The Night Circus probably around a decade ago, soon after it was published, and I found it strange, mysterious, gripping and beautiful. However, I have never been tempted to re-read it, and I can’t remember all that much about it now. It had a quality shared by another of my favourite writers, Frances Hardinge: the creation of a peculiar but compelling world, similar to but more interesting than the ‘real world’. In Morgenstern’s first novel, this was the world of The Night Circus, capturing the timeless weirdness of all that is carnivalesque – circus, travelling fair, theatre. In The Starless Sea, this other world that exists alongside our own is an underground universe, level upon level, with a sea made of honey, a pirate who is also a metaphor, trompe l’oeil doors that actually open and a series of ornate library rooms lined with enough books to satisfy the most ardent bibliophile.

              The protagonist of The Starless Sea is Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a postgrad student at a US university who, as a child, failed to take a chance and thereby missed his first opportunity to discover the endless libraries of the harbour. He is drawn into a mysterious and dangerous world, meets the love of his life, and helps to complete a story that has been unfolding for generations. In this respect, it bears some resemblance to Little,Big by John Crowley (also reviewed on here). It also reminded me a little of Scarlet Thomas’s novels, though the style is quite different. Morgenstern writes in an alluring, dreamlike prose, verging at times on the purplish but generally remaining on this side of enjoyable.  In fact, it is the beauty of her writing that kept me reading, though I can understand that it might wear thin for some readers. She does share Thomas’s interest in symbols and magic, however. Zach’s mother, the clairvoyant, could have stepped straight out of a Thomas novel.  

              One particularly skillful aspect of the writing is her use of original ‘fairy-tales’, short fables which pepper the central story and lend it depth and variety. The novel moves about a lot, jumping from character to character, location to location, and making excellent use of intertextuality – the fables, and the extracts from one of Zach’s university friend’s diaries, revealed Morgenstern’s skill at writing in different voices and styles. Morgenstern is a skillful and thoughtful writer. Her characters are interesting and her ideas highly imaginative, but there is a slightly-too-large psychic distance between story and reader at times.

              I did enjoy this novel. At least, I did until the last fifth when the narrative became unruly and unclear (to me at least). I found myself, towards the end, beginning to wish it was over. I felt that I was losing interest in the plot which seemed increasingly convoluted and, even after the novel ended, I wasn’t absolutely sure about what the story actually was. This probably suggests a defect in my understanding as much as anything. I felt that a great deal of mystery was set up early on, and though it was resolved I was still left a little confused and unsatisfied. Nevertheless, I think it is a novel worth reading, if you like fantasy of the off-beat, magical, New Age variety.   

RATING: The Starless Sea ****