"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. . . . With "On Such a Full Sea," [Chang-rae Lee] 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" 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. "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 neighborhoods have been repurposed as highwalled, self-contained labor colonies. And the members of the labor 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 labor 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.
Industry Reviews
"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
