Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons in Get Reviews!

Sep 12, 2018 Jonathan rated it it was amazing

If there were a holiday especially for authors called, say, “Wordsgiving” that included a traditional feast, Raymond St. Elmo would have a seat at the grownups’ table. Now, if he would be so kind as to carve the bird, that will provide me with a good segue into the next, um, course of this review.

To describe "Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons" as a story about a sailor shipwrecked on a fantastical island would be like describing a club sandwich as a slice of cooked poultry. I If there were a holiday especially for authors called, say, “Wordsgiving” that included a traditional feast, Raymond St. Elmo would have a seat at the grownups’ table. Now, if he would be so kind as to carve the bird, that will provide me with a good segue into the next, um, course of this review.

To describe "Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons" as a story about a sailor shipwrecked on a fantastical island would be like describing a club sandwich as a slice of cooked poultry. It's terribly incomplete and inaccurate, but it's a place to start.

The protagonist of the novel, Clarence St. Elmo (possibly some distant relative of the author), isn’t much of a sailor, having been a poet before his first venture out to sea. Unfortunately for him and the ship he’s sailing on (The Unicorn), hardly anyone else on board is a sailor either. And then there’s the extraordinarily dangerous (and ever-whispering), cargo.

A shipwreck is the natural result of a most unnatural storm, and Clarence St. Elmo finds himself washed up on an island inhabited by all sorts of mythological terrors, and some pretty unpleasant people, too. But of all the horrible, fantastical critters that Clarence must deal with, none are as terrifying and intractable as the one he boarded The Unicorn to escape: Nope, not even going to speak its name.

The thing about this book is the writing. Sure, there’s an interesting, complex, and relatable protagonist, and humor that is gentle, dry, literary, and insightful, but really, it’s the prose that makes it hum—prose that compares favorably to the best I’ve ever read. There’s great stuff like a seashell “delicate as a porcelain orchid” and the mayor of the Island of Theodosia (Theodosia) who is “an old book of a woman” (aside: how come spell-check doesn’t waggly line Theodosia? . . . Oh!), but what is important is that no matter how fantastic and other-worldly the scene, Raymond St. Elmo creates a beautiful, vivid, and detailed tableau in the reader’s head.

You ought to read this book. If you need a more specific recommendation, then I would say, if you liked Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast” books, you would like this novel—though I think "Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons" is better. Both writers do a phenomenal job of fantastical scene and world building, but Peake tends to give a whole lot of love to details that then sail over the horizon never to be seen again. Raymond St. Elmo, on the other hand, brings the details back around, giving the reader a satisfaction akin to an unexpected encounter with an old friend. If you liked (one of my all-time favorites) Patrick Dewitt’s “Undermajordomo Minor” you would like this novel.

There’s a nice line in the novel I’m going to comment on here just to show what a smart and attentive reader I am. Clarence says, at one point: “Imagine Hamlet grown up enough to just walk out of Elsinore.” That’s a really neat trick for a writer to pull off, to have a character say something that reveals some aspect of their (the character’s) nature to the reader that even the character doesn’t understand (not yet, anyway). Not only would a passive-aggressive Hamlet be a lot less interesting than the neurotic Hamlet we know and love (and the play would be over before it started), but, as Clarence ought to know, there are some things you can’t run away from (cough cough true love cough).

“Letters from a Shipwreck in the Sea of Suns and Moons” is a big read in more ways than one, and asks for (and deserves) some dedicated reading time. So don’t fill up on the appetizers. Okay, that was lame. Sometimes I should just walk away from the extended metaphor.
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Dec 27, 2016 David Rose rated it it was amazing

Shelves: want-to-re-read, more-please-author

Can one drown in a book? I wondered this, approaching the half-way mark, as I was going down for the third time, that notorious bobble of no return. Clearly the answer is yes, or I would not be penning this from a fireside at the bottom of the ocean, where a small group of dear friends are toasting marshmallows.

Drowning, let me assure you, is not nearly as frightening as some have claimed. At least, not in literary seas, which have the advantage of not wetting one. Rather, the experience is invi ...more

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Aug 28, 2016 Kathleen Garlock rated it it was amazing

How to do this book justice?

It’s a struggle I haven’t yet resolved. Oh sure, I could take the easy route and say this reads as if Sam Clemens was alive and well, sharing digs with Elvis and Jim Morrison, and writing under a new nom-de-plume, but like I said—too easy. And frankly much more probable than the fact that this brilliant, funny, wise, and above all else, romantic novel is self-published. And yet, that’s the very truth of it. The world is an odd odd place.

Yet, not as odd as the cargo a ...more

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