Story in Review: Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel

This was a lovely novel.

Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel takes a hard look at what it means to be a parent stuck in a tough decision, but without becoming grim like so many do. This novel was lyrical, full of twists, and hit all the right notes by the end.

I don’t want to give anything away, so I’m going to let the book speak for itself.

(and sorry no page numbers – reading on an iPad is less than ideal)

Favorite Quotes:

“Sometimes you have to remind yourself after adventure comes that there was a time when you went looking for it.”

“This was a testament not to Graham’s lack of self-awareness, I believe, but to the confused nature of each of our personal histories, the mess of contradicting passions and aversions developed over a lifetime.”

“The course of a life will shift—really shift—many times over the years. But rarely will there be a shift that you can feel gathering in the distance like a storm, rarely will you notice the pressure drop before the skies open.”

“When you build a house beyond the edge of a continent, you’re not looking to make friends.”

“It was terrible, this wealth of detail, this avalanche of precision.”

“There should be another word for a second marriage like theirs, which was as distinct from the first as retirement from work.”

“You can sort of remember what it was like before—maybe you vaguely recall a certain uncluttered pattern to your days and conversations and thoughts—but that ease of existence you once felt, that personal comfort, no longer matters.”

“The empty vessel that consumed so much space, the thunderous void. I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or even angels, though I’d always loved the idea of these things and wished I could believe—but how else to define the bellowing, chest-beating presence of absence?”

“One could tell he was a father, looking at him. He wore fatherhood on his skin.”

“How many times, in the decade since Graham and I had met, had I had the experience of barely registering something until he turned my head and forced me to look at it?”

“I don’t love him like I did. But I love him in a new way, and we are in this thing together. We are going to raise these children or die trying.”

“Marriages die in pieces, I thought. That’s how it happens.”

“The disquieting underbelly of loss that comes with getting something you badly want. The thing I’d always understood, even before my mother got sick, was that anything started will inevitably end, anything loved will be lost.”

“As with so many things, there was no choice but to forgive.”

“It seemed I’d never before understood the meaning of the word regret. Now it seemed regret was the desperate desire to reverse a specific amount of time.”

Why this was a great story: The pacing was incredible. I raced through this book in two days. It was a perfect, all-consuming vacation read, but with plenty of substance to remember it long after vacation is gone. The characters are each unique and wholly developed, and the plot is genuinely one that I could not have guessed had I tried (I usually do, and I am usually right).

What could have made it a better story? I don’t know as that I have a single critique. All of the characters deserved their time on the page, it was long enough to fully flesh out the story without ever becoming rambling. The imagery was gorgeous. I just loved this book.

Have you read Sea Creatures or anything else by Susanna Daniel? I’d love to hear about it!