Reading The Starless Sea (#1048)

Topics/tags: Reviews, short

In the most recent installment of The Rebelsky Book Club, the Rebelsky family read and discussed Erin Morgenstern’s [1] The Starless Sea. For those of you who have forgotten, the Rebelsky Book Club is an opportunity for the five members of our Rebelsky clan to sit down and discuss a book. We started with Carol Dweck’s Mindset. I think The Starless Sea is our eleventh book and our third or fourth work of fiction.

It was my turn to choose, so I deserve the blame or the credit for choosing this book [2]. I will admit that it was a hard choice, not least because I was only 20% through the book when I had to choose a book. Nonetheless, at that point, I knew that Morgenstern can be a wonderfully lyrical writer and that the book contains cleverly interlinked sets of interrelated and interreferential [3] stories.

Writing about the book is hard. It doesn’t help that Morgenstern has one of her characters say Books are always better when read rather than explained [4,5]. And so perhaps I should not say much, other than to repeat that I appreciated the lyricism and the interlinked parts of the work [6].

Plus it has cats.

And a pirate [7].

You should read it.

Postscript: I would be negligent if I did not mention that my family expressed some concern that the Kindle edition has some sentences that lack grammatical clarity. For example, Whatever you are seeking here you will not find it (p. 255) could be Whatever you are seeking here, you will not find it or Whatever you are seeking, here you will not find it, which mean somewhat different things.

Postscript: The always acquisitive SamR wonders if the book has enough meaning that I’d like to acquire a signed copy from Morgenstern’s local bookstore, which is relatively close to Eldest Son. Of course, the bookstore is probably not open right now and it sounds like she’s not currently signing copies [8].

[1] I have no idea whether or not she’s related to S. Morgenstern. At times, it feels that way.

[2] Since our consensus was This book was worth reading, I’ll choose to take credit.

[3] Perhaps even more so than my endnotes.

[4] Morgenstern does not boldface that quotation.

[5] p. 224.

[6] It’s sufficiently interlinked that it feels like you will gain more upon repeated readings.

[7] I do not believe it is the Dread Pirate Roberts, but you can never be sure. Or at least I can never be sure.

[8] Or perhaps they can’t get copies back and forth. It’s a puzzling time.

Version 1.0 released 2020-04-13.

Version 1.0.1 of 2020-04-13.