From a Low and Quiet Sea

Man, oh man, what a rough start to my Man Booker Prize year. Snap and Warlight were both terribly difficult to get through. Snap just wasn't Man Booker material; Warlight was a sleepy, emotionless read. But when I started in on From a Low and Quiet Sea, I saw brilliance and beauty and I knew that Man Booker season had taken a turn for the better. Hallelujah! And then, it took a turn, and another turn, and another. In the end I was so confused and lost. I don't know what happened. Let's go back to the beginning...

From a Low and Quiet Sea starts great. There's a beautiful meditation about the connectedness of trees. This serves as a metaphor for the story that follows—how we're all connected, how when one tree ails, others send nutrients through the soil. What follows are three seemingly unrelated stories that come together in the end. The first of these stories is about Farouk, a Syrian refugee struggling to provide a new life for this family. It's a common theme as of late, particularly in European literature, and there's nothing that feels fresh about this particular story, but it's done with great empathy and care. It was just enough to give me hope for a satisfying novel.

The second story was fine and in some way superior to the first, but in a book billed as a novel, a reader expects some connection to the first story. It's in no way evident. What we're given is the story of Lampy, an attendant at a care home. This story largely revolves around some mishaps Lampy has while driving these elderly people to their various appointments. This second story was as riveting as the first, but it felt more authentic.

And then, I don't know what happened. There's a third story, but the details of it felt disjointed. A religious man, John, clearing his conscious—lots of back story about the unexpected death of a sibling, an abusive sister, his own abuses, politics. I lost the story here. Unfortunately, I never found it again.

The final section attempts to connect all these threads, but it does so not in a direct manner, but by bringing in other perspectives. Attempts of cleverness are made by not naming characters immediately, but by referring to them. Other characters are introduced and blur with these primary characters. I didn't know what was going on anymore and I didn't care. This may have been a result of my own daftness, but I suspect it had more to do with the author being closer to the material than his reader. Whatever the reason, I didn't understand what the point was, or why so much effort was placed on putting these characters together.

In the end, I felt tricked. This wasn't a novel. It was a collection of three stories with some coincidental connection in the final pages. A connection that felt forced. A connection I still struggle to understand. But From a Low and Quiet Sea is still more of a novel than 2016 nominee, All That Man Is, so there's that.

I'm sure that I'll come across more works of Ryan's in the future, and I'm okay with that, because I liked his writing style and when this “novel” was strong, it was strong. It just lost something along the way and, in turn, it succeeded in losing me.