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On Such A Full Sea Kindle Edition
by Chang-Rae Lee (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.8 out of 5 stars 262 ratings
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On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee's elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in.
In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. Long-abandoned urban neighbourhoods have been repurposed as highwalled, self-contained labour colonies. And the members of the labour class-descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally ruined provincial China-find purpose and identity in their work to provide pristine produce and fish to the small, elite, satellite charter villages that ring the labour settlement.
In this world lives Fan, a female fish-tank diver, who leaves her home in the B-Mor settlement (once known as Baltimore), when the man she loves mysteriously disappears. Fan's journey to find him takes her out of the safety of B-Mor, through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant with scant governmental oversight, and to a faraway charter village, in a quest that will soon become legend to those she left behind.
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Print length
369 pages
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Product description
Review
Praise for "The Surrendered"
"["The Surrendered"] is epic in scope, masterful in execution, heart stopping at times, and heartbreaking at others. . . . Lee understands that in art and in stories what is perhaps most valuable is not what can be explained but what can be felt."--"The Boston Globe"
"Breathtakingly alive." --"San Francisco"" Chronicle"
"Lee shows great tenderness for his [characters], even as he refuses them easy redemption. . . .Sublime and transcendent."--"Entertainment Weekly"
"A landmark novel about love and war . . . impossibleto put down."--"O: The Oprah Magazine"
"Lee, always entrancing and delving, takes a truly radical leap in this wrenching yet poetic, philosophical, even mystical speculative odyssey. . . . Lee brilliantly and wisely dramatizes class stratification and social disintegration, deprivation and sustenance both physical and psychic, reflecting, with rare acuity, on the evolution of legends and how, in the most hellish of circumstances, we rediscover the solace of art. Electrifying."--"Booklist "(starred review)
"The title alone is an astonishing feat of encapsulated genius from the inimitable Lee. . . . Brilliant . . . A heart-thumping adventure."--"Library Journal "(starred review)
"A harrowing and fully imagined vision of dystopian America from Lee. . . . The potency and strangeness of [his]characters never diminish the sense that Lee has written an allegory of our current predicaments, and the narration, written in the collective voice of B-Mor, gives the novel the tone of a timeless and cautionary fable. Welcome and surprising proof that there's plenty of life in end-of-the-world storytelling."--"Kirkus "(starred review)
"Should every talented novelist have a go at dystopia? Probably not, but we can thank the gods of chaos that the trendy genre fell into the hands of Chang-rae Lee. Over four novels, Lee has mastered the art of lyrical realist portraiture, breathing life into immigrants at sea in modern America. Taking a bold turn with his fifth, "On Such a Full Sea," he's equally deft at envisioning a failed America. . . . As Fan's wild journey takes her across the socioeconomic strata, Les's novel brilliantly satisfies the genre's prime directive, which is to reveal the awful present by means of the terrible future."--"GQ"
"[The] haunting "On Such a Full Sea ." . . recalls the work of Cormac McCarthy and Kazuo Ishiguro. Here Lee weaves multiple plots into an ambitious epic showcasing a fearless fish-tank-diver heroine as she treks across a devastated landscape. . . . With its appealing protagonist as narrative glue, "On Such a Full Sea "layers stories within stories, building to its final, resonant catharsis."--"O, The Oprah Magazine"
"[A] moving new novel."--"Vanity Fair"
"[A] riveting story . . . Lee's brilliantly rendered dystopia resembles our America."--"More"
"Lee's prose is sumptuous and at dimes discursive, and for that reason, this is a novel that demands the reader's full engagement. The rewards for that commitment are considerable; "On Such a Full Sea "is an elegiac and often unsettling glimpse of a future that could be closer than we'd like to think."--"Bookpage"
"It's an engrossing read, and Lee's skills as a world builder of the finest order are evident in every chapter."--"Publishers Weekly "(starred review)
"Lee, always entrancing and delving, takes a truly radical leap in this wrenching yet poetic, philosophical, even mystical speculative odyssey. . . . Lee brilliantly and wisely dramatizes class stratification and social disintegration, deprivation and sustenance both physical and psychic, reflecting, with rare acuit
"Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and "On Such a Full Sea "provides all that and more. . . . Lee has always been preoccupied by the themes of hope and betrayal, by the tensions that arise in small lives in the midst of great social change. His marvelous new book, which imagines a future after the breakdown of our own society takes on those concerns with his customary mastery of quiet detail--and a touch of the fantastic. . . . With "On Such a Full Sea," he has found a new way to explore his old preoccupation: the oft-told tale of the desperate, betraying, lonely human heart."--Andrew Sean Greer, "The New York Times Book Review"
"I've never been a fan of grand hyperbolic declarations in book reviews, but faced with "On Such a Full Sea," I have no choice but to ask: Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?"--Porochista Khakpour, "The Los Angeles Times"
"In his latest and boldest novel, "On Such a Full Sea," Lee's characters are Chinese immigrant workers in the United States--specifically Chinese workers from a long-elapsed China toiling in a fast-declining America a century or so from now. For Lee's heroine, Fan, the issue is not acclimatization but self-discovery. The adventures of this feisty yet wary protagonist, together with a bleak but arresting vision of the future, keep the reader rapt and concerned for the fate of both beleaguered character and battered brave new world."--"Minneapolis Star Tribune"
"Now with "On Such a Full Sea," one of our most silken storytellers, Chang-rae Lee, has imagined how it all goes wrong in the darkest installment of this literary night terror yet. The menace of Lee's book derives from how closely it resembles reality. The haves and have-nots in his world are neatly balkanized. Cities produce, suburbs consume, and only the rich can afford the health care that keeps them alive. . . . With this strange and magically grim book, Chang-rae Lee has allow --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
About the Author
Chang-rae Lee is the author of "Native Speaker," winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction; "A Gesture Life"; "Aloft"; and "The Surren"dered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Selected by "The New Yo"rker as one of the "20 Writers for the 21st Century," Chang-rae Lee is Professor professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and the a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.
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Review
Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and On Such a Full Sea provides all that and more...His marvelous new book, which imagines a future after the breakdown of our own society, takes on those concerns with his customary mastery of quiet detail - and a touch of the fantastic - New York Times Book Review
Similar to Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go . . . a strange, skilful performance - Independent
The Road suddenly feels unthreatening in contrast to Chang-rae Lee's engrossing new novel . . . [a] fine entry into this tradition - Financial Times
Fascinating . . . for all its adventure narrative, it is underpinned by a solid and shrewd reading of present-day American economics - Guardian --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Publisher
Chang-rae Lee is the author of the bestselling novel Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/Pen award and The Surrendered. He teaches at Princeton University. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
From the Back Cover
Praise for The Surrendered
'A gripping page-turner ... a literary blockbuster in The English Patient tradition' Kasia Boddy, Daily Telegraph
Someday this community might be remembered as an excellent place, and even by those of us who recognize its shortcomings. But we don't wish to dwell on the unhappier details. Most would agree that any rational person would leap at the chance of living here in B-Mor, given what it's like out there, beyond the walls.
Lithe and tiny, Fan is a diver at the New China settlement of B-Mor, a worker colony long-ago known as Baltimore, her circumscribed world the temperature-controlled fish tanks that feed a contaminated continent, and Reg, the golden-skinned, simple-hearted man she loves.
Rigorously pressurised and demarcated, the dystopian America Fan serves is ruled by the professional Charter caste. While B-Mors are obedient and tranquillised by duty and the fear of chaos, the pampered, ruthless Charters inhabit idyllic, over-supplied communities behind whose gates they jostle ceaselessly for dominance. Estranged from nature, B-Mors and Charters alike shy from the spaces between, where 'counties' people - outcasts, free-thinkers and renegades, bandits and pedlars - forage and grub and steal and kill. One quiet day Reg is removed from the colony - whether for a nameless infraction, or because he is disease-resistant in a world where no one is C-free, it is impossible to say. Fan decides she must follow. But her departure threatens to disrupt the whole order of B-Mor society, and only savage action can hold it together.
A mesmerising narrative of courage and longing, On Such a Full Sea is an epic tale: brilliantly speculative, absolutely involving and profoundly humane.
'a writer of immense subtlety and craft' Guardian--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Book Description
From the beloved award-winning author of Native Speaker and The Surrendered, a highly provocative, deeply affecting story of one woman's legendary quest in a shocking, future America --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
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Product details
ASIN : B00FLY3RX2
Publisher : Little, Brown Book Group; Digital original edition (7 January 2014)
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 369 pages
Customer reviews
3.8 out of 5 stars
3.8 out of 5
Top review from Australia
Jennifer
TOP 10 REVIEWER
4.0 out of 5 stars ‘Have we not done the job of becoming our best selves?’Reviewed in Australia on 29 April 2014
The title of this novel is drawn from a line in Shakespeare’s play, ‘Julius Caesar’. It’s a line from Act IV Scene II where Brutus speaks to convince Cassius that it is time to begin the battle against Octavius and Antony : ‘On such a full sea are we now afloat/ And we must take the current when it serves/Or lose our ventures.’ Sometimes (but not always) this line seems appropriate to the journey of Fan throughout this novel.
At some time in the future, after a period of decline, America is a rigidly class-stratified society. Urban neighbourhoods are now self-contained labour colonies. The labourers themselves are descendants of people brought over from provincial China, by then an environmental ruin. The lives of the labourers are given shape and purpose by their work which is to provide produce and fish to the small elite charter villages that surround the labour colony. Fan is a female fish-tank diver in the B-Mor settlement (once known as Baltimore). Fan leaves her home when Reg, the man she loves, disappears. Her journey in search of Reg takes her from B-Mor, through the anarchy of the Open Counties to a faraway charter village. Fan’s quest becomes a legend to those she leaves behind, and the narrative unfolds in a first person plural voice: the collective voice of those that Fan leaves behind in B-More.
‘A tale, like the universe, they tell us, expands ceaselessly each time you examine it, until there’s finally no telling exactly where it begins, or ends, or where it places you now.’
This novel is part quest and part dystopian fiction with hints, to me at least, of a futuristic morality play. I found elements of the narration irritating and yet, while I didn’t like the anonymity of a collective first person voice it seemed to very effectively convey Fan’s world. For me, it wasn’t Fan herself that made the story interesting, or even the (incomplete and sometimes hazy) world depicted. What held my attention was trying to work out how Fan was going to arrive at (and at which) one of three possible endings I imagined for her. But by the end of the novel, Fan as an individual was less important than her story, which itself became secondary to the language used in writing it.
And yet, while elements of the story are recognisable and familiar, it’s never comfortable. Fan is not a superhero and her ordinariness (in some aspects) is more unsettling than some of the challenges she meets during her travel. It’s hard to categorise this novel: it was an interesting journey but I’m not at all comfortable with its conclusion.
‘What hasty preparations we make for our future.’
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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Top reviews from other countries
Mig Bardsley
4.0 out of 5 stars InterestingReviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2017
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I enjoyed this but I did find the narrative style a little stilted. Fan, the heroine, leaves her rigidly defined existence as a labourer caring for fish in this slightly dystopian world in search of her vanished lover. She experiences other classes and groups in her search and her journey is described as a series of musings by the collective imagination of those she left behind. It's an odd way to tell a story but although it does often ramble and digress more than I'd like, in the end I found that the changes in the community she left made it grow almost like a character. So, while I sometimes found it tedious, it was essential to the story, which in the end seemed to be as much about the community as about Fan's quest.
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Ms. L. L. Davis
4.0 out of 5 stars Four StarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 February 2015
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Lyrical and haunting. A different take on the dystopia theme. Intriguing. All in all a very satisfying read.
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Lindsay Wincherauk
5.0 out of 5 stars An enthralling, captivating, gripping, dystopian (?) read.Reviewed in Canada on 15 March 2021
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How did the book make me feel/think?
I’ve read a few dystopian-themed books lately. What I’ve discovered: there might not be such a thing as a dystopian world. We’ve arrived. We’re living it. Open your eyes + ears. The truth is often accepted as the words of those with the loudest talking sticks. But the thing is, it’s not really the truth.
Cards are dealt. If you’re lucky, you’ve been dealt a decent hand. Or if you are fortunate (?) your generational cards have given you an unearned upper hand.
We’re tossed into our lots in life. Climbing out, is insurmountable at best. We are dropped into set categories. Some of us must make the best of menial in an angry world. Some of those dealt strong non-generational hands forget where they’ve come from. They’re small people, often with ginormous trucks. A silver spoon drops out of one of their mouths; he/she doesn’t realize he/she is being used as well. It doesn’t matter. A safety net is in place; he/she will never fall far.
As for the rest of us, we must fight and claw, often over each other, as we desperately try to make our way through the impossible. Kindness is often replaced by struggle.
We are all sick. Nobody is immune, except for one man, who may be the cure for all - the entitled want to use him, to harvest the cure.
Eyes always darting. Never connecting. Money comes before humanity. Business is heartless. We’re the product: Humans. Damaged. Flawed. Barely holding on. We shamelessly hide behind a shaded false mask of direction, when used up – you tell the broken: This is no longer for you. Each time, your soul dies a little more. You don’t care; you drive a big truck.
But I have nowhere else to go. Life has ravaged me. You are draining the last droplets of my plasma.
Go. It’s not working anymore.
Please. I have another drop, you futilely plead.
A week later: Hey, did you hear, So-and-so died?
We pretend to care. So-and-so had nowhere else to go. We took what we could. There is no time to mourn; another soul who is barely holding on is waiting to take So-and-so(s)’ place.
ON SUCH A FULL SEA is an enthralling, captivating, gripping, dystopian read where we might, if we don’t take a moment to pause and realize, as Chang-Rae Lee weaves this breathtaking futuristic tale of where we might be heading—in reality, we may already have arrived—now our challenge is to have the dealer deal fairer hands.
That’s how this book made me feel.
WRITTEN: March 19, 2021
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Walter Truesdale
4.0 out of 5 stars Unique presentation of a dystopian futureReviewed in Canada on 22 July 2016
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A gentle and unique style eases the reader into a dystopian future that reflects current trends in a way that doesn't seem as frighting as it should be. The narrator describes the events in a matter of fact prose that still manages to make the story intensely human. There are a lot of clever devices, such as one protagonist that only appears in retrospect, and a cultural zeitgeist that is both strange, and familiar. The main character displays a strength and resolve despite here small stature as she leaves the rigid confines of her community and faces a number of bizarre challenges during her search for her missing soul-mate.
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Heidi D.
5.0 out of 5 stars On such a full seaReviewed in Germany on 6 November 2014
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What a philosophical, sad and deep story. I love Chang-Rae Lee's stories. To tell the truth: I am a long-time fan of his!
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