Synopsis
"Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and "On Such a Full Sea "provides all that and more. . . . With "On Such a Full Sea," [Chang-rae Lee] has found a new way to explore his old preoccupation: the oft-told tale of the desperate, betraying, lonely human heart."--Andrew Sean Greer, "The New York Times Book Review"
"I've never been a fan of grand hyperbolic declarations in book reviews, but faced with "On Such a Full Sea," I have no choice but to ask: Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?"--Porochista Khakpour, "The Los Angeles Times"
From the beloved award-winning author of "Native Speaker "and "The Surrendered," a highly provocative, deeply affecting story of one woman's legendary quest in a shocking, future America.
"On Such a Full Sea "takes Chang-rae Lee's elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in.
In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. Long-abandoned urban neighborhoods have been repurposed as highwalled, self-contained labor colonies. And the members of the labor class--descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally ruined provincial China--find purpose and identity in their work to provide pristine produce and fish to the small, elite, satellite charter villages that ring the labor settlement.
In this world lives Fan, a female fish-tank diver, who leaves her home in the B-Mor settlement (once known as Baltimore), when the man she loves mysteriously disappears. Fan's journey to find him takes her out of the safety of B-Mor, through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant with scant governmental oversight, and to a faraway charter village, in a quest that will soon become legend to those she left behind.
Review
Praise for "The Surrendered"
"["The Surrendered"] is epic in scope, masterful in execution, heart stopping at times, and heartbreaking at others. . . . Lee understands that in art and in stories what is perhaps most valuable is not what can be explained but what can be felt."--"The Boston Globe"
"Breathtakingly alive." --"San Francisco"" Chronicle"
"Lee shows great tenderness for his [characters], even as he refuses them easy redemption. . . .Sublime and transcendent."--"Entertainment Weekly"
"A landmark novel about love and war . . . impossibleto put down."--"O: The Oprah Magazine"
"Lee, always entrancing and delving, takes a truly radical leap in this wrenching yet poetic, philosophical, even mystical speculative odyssey. . . . Lee brilliantly and wisely dramatizes class stratification and social disintegration, deprivation and sustenance both physical and psychic, reflecting, with rare acuity, on the evolution of legends and how, in the most hellish of circumstances, we rediscover the solace of art. Electrifying."--"Booklist "(starred review)
"The title alone is an astonishing feat of encapsulated genius from the inimitable Lee. . . . Brilliant . . . A heart-thumping adventure."--"Library Journal "(starred review)
"A harrowing and fully imagined vision of dystopian America from Lee. . . . The potency and strangeness of [his]characters never diminish the sense that Lee has written an allegory of our current predicaments, and the narration, written in the collective voice of B-Mor, gives the novel the tone of a timeless and cautionary fable. Welcome and surprising proof that there's plenty of life in end-of-the-world storytelling."--"Kirkus "(starred review)
"Should every talented novelist have a go at dystopia? Probably not, but we can thank the gods of chaos that the trendy genre fell into the hands of Chang-rae Lee. Over four novels, Lee has mastered the art of lyrical realist portraiture, breathing life into immigrants at sea in modern America. Taking a bold turn with his fifth, "On Such a Full Sea," he's equally deft at envisioning a failed America. . . . As Fan's wild journey takes her across the socioeconomic strata, Les's novel brilliantly satisfies the genre's prime directive, which is to reveal the awful present by means of the terrible future."--"GQ"
"[The] haunting "On Such a Full Sea ." . . recalls the work of Cormac McCarthy and Kazuo Ishiguro. Here Lee weaves multiple plots into an ambitious epic showcasing a fearless fish-tank-diver heroine as she treks across a devastated landscape. . . . With its appealing protagonist as narrative glue, "On Such a Full Sea "layers stories within stories, building to its final, resonant catharsis."--"O, The Oprah Magazine"
"[A] moving new novel."--"Vanity Fair"
"[A] riveting story . . . Lee's brilliantly rendered dystopia resembles our America."--"More"
"Lee's prose is sumptuous and at dimes discursive, and for that reason, this is a novel that demands the reader's full engagement. The rewards for that commitment are considerable; "On Such a Full Sea "is an elegiac and often unsettling glimpse of a future that could be closer than we'd like to think."--"Bookpage"
"It's an engrossing read, and Lee's skills as a world builder of the finest order are evident in every chapter."--"Publishers Weekly "(starred review)
"Lee, always entrancing and delving, takes a truly radical leap in this wrenching yet poetic, philosophical, even mystical speculative odyssey. . . . Lee brilliantly and wisely dramatizes class stratification and social disintegration, deprivation and sustenance both physical and psychic, reflecting, with rare acuit
"Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and "On Such a Full Sea "provides all that and more. . . . Lee has always been preoccupied by the themes of hope and betrayal, by the tensions that arise in small lives in the midst of great social change. His marvelous new book, which imagines a future after the breakdown of our own society takes on those concerns with his customary mastery of quiet detail--and a touch of the fantastic. . . . With "On Such a Full Sea," he has found a new way to explore his old preoccupation: the oft-told tale of the desperate, betraying, lonely human heart."--Andrew Sean Greer, "The New York Times Book Review"
"I've never been a fan of grand hyperbolic declarations in book reviews, but faced with "On Such a Full Sea," I have no choice but to ask: Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?"--Porochista Khakpour, "The Los Angeles Times"
"In his latest and boldest novel, "On Such a Full Sea," Lee's characters are Chinese immigrant workers in the United States--specifically Chinese workers from a long-elapsed China toiling in a fast-declining America a century or so from now. For Lee's heroine, Fan, the issue is not acclimatization but self-discovery. The adventures of this feisty yet wary protagonist, together with a bleak but arresting vision of the future, keep the reader rapt and concerned for the fate of both beleaguered character and battered brave new world."--"Minneapolis Star Tribune"
"Now with "On Such a Full Sea," one of our most silken storytellers, Chang-rae Lee, has imagined how it all goes wrong in the darkest installment of this literary night terror yet. The menace of Lee's book derives from how closely it resembles reality. The haves and have-nots in his world are neatly balkanized. Cities produce, suburbs consume, and only the rich can afford the health care that keeps them alive. . . . With this strange and magically grim book, Chang-rae Lee has allow
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