Idgie Says:These stories are quite fantastical in nature. The slim book is filled with wryly amusing tales of humanity that would never exist in real life but are taken as perfectly normal within these pages. A few of the stories were so far off in left field that I became lost, but the majority kept me interested the entire way through. The Sea Beast Takes a Lover is one of my favorites, the phrases that are thrown out in the midst of a giant squid in heat trying to love a ship are great! Throw in a cannibal and the whole story gets even twistier.
I enjoyed this book, but admit you have to be willing to leave all sense of reality at the door to embrace it.
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February, 2018
Penguin Random House
Michael Andreasen’s spectacular debut The Sea Beast Takes a Lover: Stories... The collection is the perfect marriage of a Wes Anderson film and
Black Mirror. A strange mix? Yes, but one you won’t want to miss out on.
Bewitching and playful, with its feet only slightly tethered to the world we know, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover
explores hope, love, and loss across a series of surreal landscapes and
wild metamorphoses. Just because Jenny was born without a head doesn’t
mean she isn’t still annoying to her older brother, and just because the
Man of the Future’s carefully planned extramarital affair ends in alien
abduction and network fame doesn’t mean he can’t still pine for his
absent wife. Romping through the fantastic with big-hearted ease, these
stories cut to the core of what it means to navigate family, faith, and
longing, whether in the form of a lovesick kraken slowly dragging a ship
of sailors into the sea, a small town euthanizing its grandfathers in a
time-honored ritual, or a third-grade field trip learning that time
travel is even more wondrous–and more perilous–than they might imagine.
Andreasen’s
stories are simultaneously daring and deeply familiar, unfolding in
wildly inventive worlds that convey our common yearning for connection
and understanding. With a captivating new voice from an incredible
author, The Sea Beast Takes a Lover uses the supernatural and extraordinary to expose us at our most human.