The Raw Shark Texts

Recalling MEMENTO, Steven Hall's THE RAW SHARK TEXTS opens with a young man named Eric Sanderson awaking with no memory of anything, including who he is. Luckily he finds letters to remind him, written by himself ... well, not exactly himself, but his first self. See, this is Eric's second life. His therapist pleads with him not to trust – not even to read – these letters, because their contents could be damaging. Meanwhile, the pieces of correspondence warn him not to trust the doctor, who tells him his girlfriend died in an accident. Then a mysterious package arrives, demanding he decipher Morse code messages from a flickering light bulb for hours on end. This is all to prevent the "conceptual fish" from getting him. Conceptual fish? Yeah, you know, like eels and sharks made of letters and symbols and sometimes whole words, rather than flesh. "Say what?" you ask. And I hear you, buddy. I hear you. Slipping in and out of MATRIX-esque alternate realities – or not, who the hell knows – the metaphysical TEXTS is an obviously ambitious, but awfully pretentious exercise in literary thrillerdom. Hall has talent and I'm all for a good mind-bender, but geez, is it too much to ask for some context? It's too confusing to wrap your head around, keeping proceedings – and non-proceedings, as things bog down – at a less-than-engaging distance. Original? Certainly. Pleasurable? No. It's not without novelty value, given the random, drop-a-clue instances of charts and photos that you hope will add up to a whole, until your interest peters out by the half. When you finally hit a 50-page section that's nothing but a flipbook of a symbol-created shark swimming toward you, you'll wish it takes you all the way to the end. It doesn't. –Rod Lott Buy it at Amazon.