The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

I am beginning to be a little wary of novels with catchy title and clever covers. As I mentioned in a previous blog this month, The Sisters Brothers, with its dynamite cover, was more flash than substance. And now there's this one. The title is obviously a play on "rorschach test," and the cover of the hardback has a cut-out in the shape of a shark with text on the page underneath showing through.

Well, the plot does include a shark of sorts, a Ludovician shark, "an example of one of the many species of purely conceptual fish which swim in the flows of human interaction and the tides of cause and effect." Got that? Clear as can be, right?

Eric Sanderson awakes one morning and can't remember who he is or anything about his past. A note he finds leads him to a psychologist, who tells him that he has been suffering from a rare mental condition known as psychotropic fugue, stemming from the death of his girlfriend who died in a scuba diving accident. The psychologist tells him not to open any letters he may receive from his former self, because they will mislead him. He does begin receiving letters and he does resist for some while, although he does save the letters and packages. Finally, of course, he opens them and discovers that he has been the prey of a Ludovician shark, which has eaten his memories and emotions. And goodness, it appears that the shark is still out for him as he gains new memories and emotions.

What's a poor boy to do? He goes on a quest to find answers as to how to evade or kill the shark, and soon finds himself teamed with a young girl, to whom he feels strangely attracted. A touching love story ensues.

The plot from here on gets curiouser and curiouser, with an ending that is seemingly purposefully enigmatic--hence the "rorschach test" reference, as that is something which is interpreted by everyone in a different way. I have my own theory, of course.

This books strongly calls to mind Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, The Matrix movie, and certainly Jaws, the plot of which it follows for 50 or so pages. About 40 pages are consumed with a flip-book of a swimming word-shark.

The Raw Shark Texts is too self-consciously clever, too gimmicky, for my old-fashioned tastes, but I predict it will be (and maybe already is) something of a cult classic.