Title: On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee
Publication Year: 2014
Plot: In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. 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
Miscellaneous: It is narrated by a collective voice of residents.
We’ve reached the end of our first reading group. And our final book is On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee. It was somewhat difficult to find a novel to pair with Animal Farm, but dystopia is a broad enough genre that I hope we made it work.
Right as we sat down, one enthusiastic reader said, “This book is like a peony: it opens up just a little bit each day. And then it blossoms.” He loved it, said that Lee led him through the novel in soft waves, and he was gently brought into the world of the novel. Two of the readers really loved the style (one of them didn’t care for it too much overall).
We all liked the “We” narrator(s). A collective narrator has a calming and welcoming effect on the reader, at least with this group. It almost made it like a mythology of sorts–that Fan is this hero whose story has been told again and again over time.
One confounding thing is that Fan isn’t exactly a hero, at least in the way we traditionally think of heroes. She doesn’t change much throughout the novel and is usually acted upon. She doesn’t have a lot of agency throughout the novel. She is taken advantage of as soon as she leaves B-Mor by almost every character she encounters. So what makes her exceptional? One reader suggested she is just a mythologized runaway.
One reader, the one who didn’t like it that much, pointed out some SOLID connections to “Animal Farm.” He noted how the “we” narrators are akin to the collective animals on the farm. They are somewhat unsettled. And they have limited information (at least the later generations do). They are left to fill in the gaps and focus on the present, as the reasons for their current disposition are distant and foggy.
It was a great conclusion to this reading group. We covered a lot of territory and had some very vibrant discussions. Can’t wait for the next group.
Please feel free to share your thoughts on Lee, his work, and anything else related in the comments!
I also try to provide some supplemental reading materials in the form of papers, essays, and Q&As. Here is a link to an essay from 2017 by Christopher T. Fan.
Stay tuned for our next reading group. It’s called “Rereading the Past,” and we’re really excited about it.
Until next time,
E.
You can purchase On Such a Full Sea here: