book review: Sea Creatures by Susanna Daniel

The backstory: When I read Susanna Daniel's debut novel, Stiltsville, I gushed that "it's the most emotionally engaging novel I've read in quite some time." It not only made my top ten of 2010, it came in at number two. Given my love for Stiltsville, I was eager to see Daniel return to Miami with her second novel, Sea Creatures.

The basics: In 1992, Georgia's college admissions consulting business has failed. When her husband Graham doesn't receive tenure at Northwestern, they move back to her native Miami, where a friend of Graham's has offered him a job studying hurricanes. Their three-year-old son Frankie hasn't spoken for eighteen months, but there seems to be no medical reason why.

My thoughts: I foolishly sat down to start reading Sea Creatures before work one morning, and it was a struggle to not call in sick. One again, Daniel's writing captured me from the opening page. It's the first print book to capture me with writing and character since I read Curtis Sittenfeld's Sisterland last month.

Georgia narrates her story from the future, which gives an air of importance to all of the novel's events. There  is also a poignancy to her story, one that perhaps only reflecting on the events yet to come for the reader. The result is a brilliantly plotted, masterful contemporary novel. When I turned the last page, I was in awe of how much Daniel fit into the novel. Each character, even the minor ones, are fully formed. Parts of the novel feel like an epic, as Daniel fills the story with past, present and future.

Favorite passage: "People speak of strength in times of crisis, as if strength were some great beast that swoops in to gird us, to repair our voices and limbs when it seems they might fail. But to this day, I don't know exactly what we mean when we speak of strength."

The verdict: Sea Creatures is the best book I've read in 2013. It's a beautiful, intelligent, and heart-wrenching novel, and I hope it becomes a modern classic.

Rating: 5 out of 5
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: July 30, 2013
Source: publisher via TLC Book Tours

Convinced? Treat yourself! Buy Sea Creatures from an independent bookstore, the Book Depository or Amazon (Kindle edition.)

Want more? Visit all the tour stops, visit Susanna Daniel's website, like her on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter.

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