The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: Stories (Andreasen)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This was a book club selection.
On Good Reads, I gave this three stars. I would've gven it 2 but it's written better than any of the dreck I've given 2 stars to. But it sits in the "What the Hell Did I Just Read?" pile. Here's what I remember of the stories (after refreshing my memories with the Good Reads reviews):
The lead-off story is "Our Fathers At Sea", which I was reading thinking it had something to do with the Sea Beast of the book's title. It does not. Once I got past that, I was just trying to comprehend the whole "crating" ceremony, which turned out to be exactly what it sounded like. When men get to a certain age, they are boxed up and dropped into the sea "in an undisclosed location" -- that last part was mentioned several times, just to emphasize the "hilarity" of it, or "absurdity" or something. I kept waiting for something to happen, and then nothing happened. It just ended.
The TV show Dinoaurs did this better.
"Bodies in Space" I've already forgotten that was the title. It thought it was Man of the Future. A man and a woman are snowed in in a car, aliens grabbed them and returned them. She's making the most of it. He wants his wife back. The two weren't a couple by an affair was happening. They're being poked and probbed by scientists because they have lights embedded in the head. He hears voices asking him questions sometimes. And then the story just stops.
The titular "The Sea Beast Takes a Lover" is by defintion "weird". It's weirder in that it takes place modern day, given the technology and the references, but otherwise, you might've thought that they were Long John Silver Age pirates. The sea beast is slowly dragging the ship, the Winsome Bride, under, but the admiral is too busy eating the other officers. Meanwhile, mermaids are waiting for the men to drown. Also, they all carry effigies, and I'm not exactly sure why. In the end, one effigy sails off, and the story just ends.
"The king's teacup at rest" follows the King of Retired Amusements, who travels with two assistants to enjoy old neglected amusement parks, including eating the aging food and relish. The assistant gets things running and the King gets sick but persists. Their guide seems to be on some sort of spiritual journey listening to a bear that is balanced on a giant ball.
"He is the rainstorm and the sandstorm, hallelujah, hallelujah" It was about a disturbed child and twisted maternal instincts. Unfulflling. An open ending didn’t work well for this one. I'm not remembering it too much. Maybe the group will remind me. A young girl, old enough to bottle feed a baby but too young to understand how breast milk is made, lives with her mom, her "aunt" and her aunt's baby boy. It's important that no one knows that the aunt and the boy are there. There are people that come to the house, and the mother is always suspicious that they are trying to ascertain if the baby is there. They are afraid that the father is coming for the child. The daughter sees that the child is getting all the attention and is jealous, standard stuff that a writer could work with. She resents the baby and at the same time tries to breast feed the baby. (She enjoys the sensation until it hurts.) In the end, she doesn't kill the boy or give it away but she decides to bring the boy closer to heaven. The two women are frantic that the baby is missing and they're worried that he's been abducted, but instead the girl put him inside a third-story window flower box. It ends before you find out if he's found or if he dies from falling or exposure.
The group just mentioned putting the baby in the box. That detail reminded me of the story, which I'd completely forgotten, until it all flooded back.
"Rockabye, Rocketboy" has some of the most clinical robotic porn ever. Rocketboy is a kid with a jet pack who never seems to land, and he has a fan club, which includes a porn actress who seems to think she's just an actress, or else, porn isn't a big deal in this word. She's the "plug detective" and gets "plugged" by a robot in every episode.
"The saints in the parlor" did not appeal to me in the slightest. You can be irreverent without being sacriligious. This was neither funny nor insightful, but wasn't written well enough to be considered an attack. But it just mocked people of faith and their iconography.
"Andy, lord of ruin" The kid explodes and becomes a giant rock monster. I dn't remember hating it. But it just didn't have anything more to it.
"Jenny" is a girl born without a head. Her brother prechews her food for her. The mother does her best to keep things normal. (Dad is dead.)
"Rite of baptism" reads like a bad Monthy Python sketch that went on too long. It's presented as a script and the names are all omitted for no reason (other than the script format). It didn't get more absurd. It got really stupid. And again devoid of meaning and we never learn about the world that they are in, despite allusions to Moses and John the Baptist.
Blunderbuss -- a time travel story with a museum and conference room filled with students. A time leak makes things going crazy. This one had something going for it, and could have actually been made into a serious attempt at a sci-fi story that could've been published in any of the magazines out there now.
I pushed my way through it, got to the end. It seems that several in my group didn't or couldn't finish it, so yeah, me. I didn't enjoy it.
In summation, a group that included several educators couldn't find anything worthwhile about this book or anything resembling a theme or a moral or a position the author is advocating. They did touch on a lot of religious aspects -- maybe he has issues with this -- in the disturbed child story, the saints, and baptism and some of the others as well. They also commented on how not a single person in this entire book is likable or sympathetic. None of them are nice people and they all blame their problems on other people. It's always someone else's fault.
Not a good book.
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