Sea Monsters

I know this is a story about coming of age, breaking away from home, yearning for adventure and the surreal and romance. The heroine's stream of conscious narration is beautiful, wrapped up in rich and incongruous descriptions of sights and sounds that make the backdrop of Mexico City and the Oaxacan coast both familiar and strange, eye popping and ordinary. It's the kind of book where more goes on in the internality of the characters than in the actual plot. Luisa is fascinated by shipwrecks and doomed quests, and finds herself on one as well. I think it was hard for me to connect with her because it was hard to determine what she really wanted – which is maybe the point, because Luisa doesn't quite know what she wants either.

Maybe a little too “literary” for me – but beautifully rendered scenes.