On Such a Full Sea (Lee) - Book Reviews

Book 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. It's a wonderful addition not only to Chang-rae Lee's body of work but to the ranks of "serious" writers venturing into the realm of dystopian fantasy…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…takes on those concerns with his customary mastery of quiet detail—and a touch of the fantastic…A reader hoping for weird mutants and wild conflagrations has picked up the wrong book; Lee's influence is more Philip Roth than Philip K. Dick. Although he peppers On Such a Full Sea with some genre pleasures…Fan's journey through a mysterious future turns out to be a timeless exploration of the human condition.
Andrew Sean Greer - New York Times Book Review


Genius… With this strange and magically grim book, Chang-rae Lee has allowed us to leave the familiar behind, all so we can see it more clearly.
Boston Globe


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? His new, his fifth — where have you been? — book seals this deal. A chilling, dark, unsettling ride into a dystopia in utopia's guise, this is a novel that might divide but will no doubt conquer where it matters most.
Los Angeles Times


[On Such a Full Sea is] not just a fully realized, time-jumping narrative of an audacious young girl in search of lost loved ones, but an exploration of the meaning and function of narrative, of illusion and delusion, of engineered personalities and faint promises of personhood, and of one powerful nation's disappearance and how that indelibly affects another.
Chicago Tribune


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… There is a final surprise in store at Fan's journey's end, but it polishes what already shines. In Lee's richly imagined and skillfully executed work, the joy of traveling far outpaces the satisfaction in arriving.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune


(Starred review.) Lee's (The Surrendered) latest novel is set in a dystopic future world in which....city dwellers spend their lives in happy serfdom, working day jobs to produce goods (mostly food) for the richer Charter communities. But when Fan, an unassuming 16-year-old...[goes] in search of her vanished boyfriend, Reg, the fabric of orderly B-Mor begins to fray.... [A] fantastic blend of imagination and interpretation.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Once revealed in context, this book's title alone is an astonishing feat of encapsulated genius from the inimitable Lee. Control, individuality, nature, perfection, reality, society—all that and more fill this dystopic treatise about a not-so-futuristic, ruined America.... [Lee's] versatility ensures...appreciation among readers who enjoy a heart-thumping adventure and doctoral students in search of a superlative dissertation text. —Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Library Journal


(Starred review.) A harrowing and fully imagined vision of dystopian America from Lee, who heretofore has worked in a more realist mode.... Lee has written an allegory of our current predicaments, and the narration, written in the collective voice of [his characters], gives the novel the tone of a timeless and cautionary fable. Welcome and surprising proof that there's plenty of life in end-of-the-world storytelling.
Kirkus Reviews