The Raw Shark Texts

The book struck me as a sort of cross between The Eyre Affair and House of Leaves, combining the sort of inventive alternate realities of Fforde with the pomo typographical play of Danielewski. As with most X meets Y formulations, this one does not really do the book justice. Despite Hall's invetive metatextual world of word sharks, un-spaces, thought virus tycoons and conceptual boats the emotional core of the story is the protagonist's attempts to come to grips with the past and his own grief, guilt, memory. (A comparison with the movie Memento might also be apt, though Shark is more hopeful, less nihilistic.) An engaging, playful, but also very moving book.