Twelve in 12: The Raw Shark Texts in OD

Title: The Raw Shark Texts

Author: Steven Hall

Genre: Thriller (well, kinda)

430 pages

Eric Sanderson wakes up one morning not knowing where he is. Rather helpfully, there is a message from, well, himself. The first Eric Sanderson.

With the help of this first message, and the subsequent letters from the same person, Eric, along with his cat Ian, sets out to find the person who can help him understand what is going on, and deal with the Ludovician.

There are, in the review snippets accompanying this book, a lot of references. Daoonie Darko, Memento, Alice in Wonderland, The Matrix.

I’m going to add one more.

The Raw shark Texts is simply nothing more or less than a Charlie Kaufmann film in novel form.

It is a thriller. And a damn good one at that. But, with it’s mentions of conceptual sharks, non-divergant loops, unspace and protective mail, it is somewhat of a metaphysical nightmare.

The make up of some of the pages, with seemingly random words and a shark flick book, suggests that the manuscript came, not with a synopsis but rather an instruction manual.

But, for all that, the book works. Eric is a compelling and sympathetic character which makes the amnesia angle, which rarely, if ever, works in fiction workable. Ian the cat is a typical cat.

The rest of the characters are good to OK, but it does take some working out, in one particular case, if she is the person she’s presented as being or not.

All in all, a good read, albeit one you will have to think about and possiblyy read again to try and work out all the mysteries.

Will