A review by sam_bizar_wilcox
Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis

3.0

Reading Sea Monsters is like being speaking with a friend whose estimation of herself is based entirely on her taste in music. Which is to say: Sea Monsters is a clever book, but a book so wrapped up in its own cleverness as to refuse to fully give the reader access to its inner machinations. It is a playlist-as-proxy to tangible insight, a novel written in shorthand unconsciously building fortress to protect it from the reader. Aridjis is talented, profound, and an immense literary force, but this novel showcases these strengths only from a distance, leaving me longing for whatever might be next, optimistic that by then she'll give us a closer view.