The Raw Shark Texts - Stephen Hall
I'm not sure what to make of this book. I haven't been sure since I read the cover. Is it serious fiction or airplane fare or what? Ok, that doesn't matter. A book is a book and labels are stupid. I know I enjoyed reading it, I know that there are parts of the book that I genuinely enjoyed that no one could take away from me and that says something at least. But it's not perfect, not any where near perfect. The characters are flat and the dialogue is generally trite, an author striving for witty, sarcastic and ending up with contrived and empty.
Ok whatever. The book is a testament to the novel as a delivery system. The author had an idea, and a it was a good one - conceptual fishes and the immortal Mycroft Ward are the two best things about the book, the things that make me want to like what I read but it suffers because the author has so much to say that he must tell us everything. Further weakening the book one must confront the fact that it is a rather blatant Frankenstein monster, a stitch up of
various bits of familiar pop culture.
There is quote on the front from Mark Haddon (this only added to my pre-read confusion) where he calls it a bastard child of the Matrix, Jaws, and the Da Vinci Code, which is pretty darn bang on and if you throw Memento in there too you have a pretty good idea of what will happen. In fact the climax of the book is an unapologetic rehash of Jaws, which is cocky or stupid or art or I don't know but it did not improve my opinion. There is also ASCII type art floating everywhere which is gimicky even if I guess it does a good job of showing a shark made of memes and concepts.
This book had a good concept. In fact it had two. This could have been two books I think. One devoted to the Ludovician and Eric Sanderson and one devoted to Mycroft Ward. As unfulfilling as the book on whole might have been the Ward part was possibly the best, or at least the most interesting part. A man who dedicates his life to immortality succeeds and in a way that is entirely plausible. Using hypnosis he implants his personality and his memories and everything about him onto a willing volunteer and then does this new Ward who shares all mannerisms, opinions, thoughts process etc not indeed becomes the Ward? In that way could you say that Ward had not achieved immortality? But the Raw Shark Texts is more interested in the boring relationship of Scout and Eric and then it's shark time for thirty pages but seriously if you watched the last fifteen minutes of Jaws you'd end up with the same result just you would have enjoyed yourself a lot more.
