Shining at the Bottom of the Sea

by Stephen Marche
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea
book data
52 ratings, 3.63 average rating, 19 reviews (more data...)
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published
2007 by Riverhead Hardcover

binding
Hardcover, 256 pages

isbn
1594489416    (isbn13: 9781594489419)

description
A virtuoso performance from an emerging new literary talent who crafts a vividly drawn history of an imaginary country.

In this stylistic tour de for...more




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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 104)

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Jason Pettus
11/15/07
Jason Pettus rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in November, 2007
(My full review of this book is much longer than the excerpt posted below; find it at the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

There is of course a long and proud tradition here in the West of elaborate histories concerning made-up places; take JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" series, as perhaps the most famous example of all. But now imagine that the made-up land in question is designed deliberately to mix with our real world, geography and his...more
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Spiros
12/17/08
Spiros rated it: 2 of 5 stars

bookshelves: remainders
Read in December, 2008
recommends it for: those who are embarrassed to be seen with fantasy novels
Compendia always tend to be hit-or-miss; compendia of literarture from imaginary cultures probably will inevitably miss more than they hit. Some of the earlier pieces in this anthology of Sanjanian literature are engaging; as the Sanjan culture evolves into Sanjania, the stories and criticism become more pallid and didactic, which may well have been the effect Marche was aiming for, but doesn't really do the reader any favors.
Another problem, over and above the quality of the writing, is t...more
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Paula
12/31/08
Paula rated it: 5 of 5 stars

bookshelves: best-reads-of-2008, novels
Read in February, 2008
Marche has concocted a fictive anthology of the imagined national literature of a pretend island in the North Atlantic, Sanjania, a purported former British colony: a fiction from first to last page, from Foreward and Preface to Biographical Notes and Acknowledgements. At first I was skeptical of the conceit but Marche pulls it off, I think with grace, wit and an impressive ability to shift style and voice to create not just distinctive characters but distinctive authors. This is a book, howeve...more
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Marjorie
04/05/08
Marjorie rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in May, 2008
recommends it for: lit geeks and the adventurous
Following on Possession, another work of alternate literary history, this time an anthology of literature from an imaginary North Atlantic island country called Sanjania (Sanjan Island before that, Saint John Island sometime when the first Europeans stumbled upon it). Because so few people seem to have taken much interest in this book, I'm going to assume it was written for me: it's at once deeply bookwormish and deeply concerned with the role of place in literature, which is one of my primary...more
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Jennifer
03/21/08
Jennifer rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in March, 2008
recommended to Jennifer by: 2008 Tournament of Books
Shining at the Bottom of the Sea definitely gets points for originality. Marche actually invents an island called Sanjania, and creates not only a history , but a literary history as well. Basically, this book is a collection of short stories that reflect Sanjania's history. The stories start out with unique dialect that portrays the early 1900's, and slowly gets "cleaner" over the years, especially after the "Clean Movement" approach to writing that united the dialects of di...more
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Moses
08/17/07
Moses rated it: 5 of 5 stars

bookshelves: readandenjoyed
Read in August, 2007
recommends it for: Megan, in particular
Upon my second reading, Shining at the Bottom of the Sea proved to be just as enchanting as it was at first. This is a staggeringly inventive collection of fictional short stories, pretending to be a scholarly collection of the best short stories from Sanjania, a small independent island in the North Atlantic. If I knew a little less about the world, reading this book would compel me to buy a ticket to Sanjania on the next plane. Knowing as I do that this is a work of fiction is strangely disapp...more
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jcg
07/16/08
jcg rated it: 2 of 5 stars

I couldn't finish this book. I tried reading the Foreword, but found it wordy and convoluted. So I skipped that and went to the Preface, which I found wordy and convoluted and full of pointless detail - it was just a recitation of invented facts, dry as dust, there was nothing to make me care about the place or the people. So I tried reading a couple of the stories which I found wordy and convoluted. No doubt that the book has some inventive language, but couldn't some of that inventiveness be p...more
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Eoin
09/03/07
Eoin rated it: 5 of 5 stars

recommends it for: elaborate liars
Unrepeatably perfect. I'm a sucker for elaborate lies, but Marche succeeds on the order of Carey's Kelly Gang without even the folklore backgrounding. The man wrote a beautiful, wideranging anthology of an imaginary culture, complete with criticism. Tlon? Funeary Violin? The only way this could have been done better, is if the book didn't weren't listed as "Experimental Fiction" in the Library of Congress. Astonishing. I am astonished.
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Jessica
06/15/09
Jessica rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in June, 2009
I really wanted to like it.
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Rick Angell
03/10/08
Rick Angell rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in February, 2008
Fabulously creative. The author, via an "anthology" of the literary history of the fiction of the fictional authors of the fictional country he creates, gives you a window into a North Atlantic island culture he imagines in beautiful detail. Plus, each of the stories is written in a unique, interesting voice. The comparison to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas is obvious and neither work suffers by its association with the other.
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Melissa
05/11/09
Melissa is currently reading it

bookshelves: currently-reading
Due to a frustrating printing error found in all copies at both Brooklyn and New York Public Libraries, I'm going to be 70 pages away from the end of this one until I can track a copy down in a bookstore somewhere that will let me hole up and finish it in an afternoon.
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Jenn
08/21/07
Jenn rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in August, 2007
The author has invented and peopled a mythical but absolutely plausible island, Sanjania, and this book "collects" pamphlets and writings from various Sanjanian authors. The individual pieces are mostly very sweet, and I was fascinated by the invented patois and slang. It's a really big concept, and executed beautifully.
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Colin
04/01/08
Colin rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in June, 2008
Wasn't so into it -- the first few stories grabbed my but they seemed to grow progressively more implausible as individual pieces of lit as they went on. . .

nifty idea, though
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Heather
11/12/07
Heather rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in November, 2007
Didn't finish this. Interesting idea (an anthology of stories purporting to be by different authors from an invented country) but execution was pretentious and often quite boring.
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Ali Mills
bookshelves: all-time-favorites
this is possibly the only book that i have read through and immediately started reading again.

actually, i know this is the only book.

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Topher
07/29/07
Topher added it

bookshelves: friends-family
Read in November, 2008
Well, marche is a genius, no doubt. Here he's become a sort of cross between David Wilson, Alfred Jarry and Joey Smallwood. Read, and be amazed!
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kirsten
04/24/08
kirsten rated it: 3 of 5 stars

had to get it out of one library twice and then another to finish because of a misprint. still pretty good.
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Ciara
03/24/08
Ciara rated it: 3 of 5 stars

Read in November, 2008
Spectacular premise for a novel; a bit slow in the execution.
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Katrina
07/03/09
Katrina marked it as to-read

bookshelves: to-read


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