The Sea Came in at Midnight

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Summary: A postmodern, intellectual puzzel, but also deeply-felt.
Review: This is the first book I have read by Erickson. I had heard good things, and this book does not dissapoint. It has been haunting me since I first read it two months ago. What is perhaps most fascinating about the books is its ability to engage both heart and mind, often times bringing them together as only good art can do. What I saw as central to this is book is the place of the individual within an oceanically overbearing world where it is scary to be on your own. Not unlike our own! But also within this framework, Erickson manages to insert questions of reason and history, and whether we can have a history that is collective, but also personal. The scope is sweeping and the imagery is often beautiful and terribly beautiful. The characters, though nothing as inspiring as most anything your Shakespeares or your Dickens have produced, are perhaps most appropriate to the overwhelmingly secular and mechanical and technological world in which they, and we, live in. I strongly recommend this book!

Rating:
Summary: Erickson Earns Findlay Seal of Quality and Good Taste!
Review: Though much better than the disappointing Amnesiascope, Erickson's latest still isn't up to the surreal majesty of his first three novels. The aquarium scene comes close, though, and any novel inspired by the lunacy of the so-called "depraved duo" Roberta and Michael Findlay is surely worth the price of admission.

Rating:
Summary: So good it?s scary
Review: `The Sea Came in at Midnight' is so good it's scary. I'm worried that it will be a long time before I read another novel that is so accomplished and successful in its intent. Maybe I shouldn't worry...maybe I only have to wait until I read another of Erickson's novels before I encounter such mastery again.

For me, the most enjoyable aspect of this novel was the elliptical paths the characters took. The way they crossed and re-crossed paths, never knowing the significance of the other in the way their lives have been shaped. Erickson manages this without forcing the relationships or situations in an artificial way.

The story itself, though, is artificial and contrived - but I mean that in a positive way! Erickson's settings, the novels events and the characters motivations are grandiose and on an epic scale. He wants you to be confronted by his themes - the decay of society, the power of redemption and self-belief - so they are enlarged and made more bold by their scale. `The Sea Came in at Midnight' is a novel that trades in challenging the reader and the reader's perceptions. You will never forget the desperation of some characters and the despair of others. Never forget the hyper-realistic imagery - Tokyo memory hotels, the mass suicide, the shattered aquarium. And finally, never forget that you have been privileged to read a novel of truly stunning accomplishment.