The Starless Sea
Erin Morgenstern, 2019
Knopf Doubleday
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385541213
Summary
From the author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.
Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks.
As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood.
Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues—a bee, a key, and a sword—that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library hidden far below the surface of the earth.
What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians—it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead.
Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also of those who are intent on its destruction.
Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose—in both the mysterious book and in his own life. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Marshfield, Massachusetts, USA
• Education—B.A., Smith College
• Currently—lives Massachusetts
Erin Morgenstern is a writer and artist. Most of her writings and paintings are fairy tales, in one way or another. She lives in Massachusetts. (From the publisher.)
In her words
I’m a Cancerian with a Leo Moon and Taurus rising and, yes, I know what all of that means.
I studied theatre & studio art at Smith College.
I grew up in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Steve Carrell now owns the store where I bought penny candy and blue raspberry Slush Puppies as a child. This both amuses and disturbs me.
I was reading Stephen King at age 12 and J.K. Rowling at age 21. This likely speaks volumes about my literary development.
I currently live in Salem, Massachusetts & will be relocating to Boston in the foreseeable future. Kittens are looking forward to the impending influx of cardboard boxes. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
[A]n abstruse series of fragmented fables... [and] the Starless Sea, a labyrinthine underground repository of stories embedded in paper, ribbons, skin, funeral shrouds and candies…. Sound thrilling? It certainly might be, but it isn’t.... [It] is strangely devoid of tension…. We flit from story to story… never knowing where we might land, or who will turn out to really be who, or if the pirate is a real pirate or a metaphor, or whether any of it has a point.
New York Times Book Review
[M]ythical… a story about stories, all essentially relating to Fate and Time.… The Starless Sea is the kind of book that could spawn a Harry Potter-esque cult. I can imagine fan sites devoted to mapping, analyzing and connecting the dots among its fantastical intricacies. I predict readers for whom it will become a holy of holies, one of their most treasured books of all time. It’s that kind of book.
Long Island Newsday
The most joyous reading experience I’ve had in recent memory.… It is, not to put too fine a point on it, wonderful… a master-class in plotting and prestidigitation… unabashedly romantic… [and] a warm, honeyed bath of words and ideas
Toronto Star
Assuredly beautiful…. The novel reads like panel after panel of mythic illustrations…. It demands that its readers interpret it in an older way; the way we read The Faerie Queene…. Well-written…. the novel’s scope and ambition are undeniable.
Guardian (UK)
A mystical adventure in an enchanted universe.… The novel is not simply a quest narrative—it’s also a meta-examination of stories that demands the reader’s patience—and then rewards it…. Morgenstern’s elegant, poetic prose keeps the pages turning as she begins to draw connections within a web of tales…. For Zachary, that pleasure outweighs any temptation he might have to return to school and his regular life. It leads, instead, to a journey of sacrifice and self-discovery as he unearths his own place in the puzzling book’s narrative. For everyone else, the thrill comes from watching him on the ride.
Time
Erin Morgenstern has magic to make… [in] a new fantastical fairy-tale for grown-ups…. The Starless Sea poses big questions about stories—the ones we read, the ones we live, and the ones we tell ourselves. And at the heart of her work lies the themes that have provoked those comparisons: redemption, sacrifice, fate, time, reincarnation.… The Starless Sea is a door to another world—one just waiting for readers to open it.
Entertainment Weekly
A richly imaginative ode to books and storytelling…. [T]his fantasy-filled novel entwines a mysterious underground world with the story of a grad student on a quest to understand his past.
People
(Starred review) Built from fables, myths, and fairy tales, Morgenstern’s long-awaited second fantastical novel delves into a vast subterranean library… This love letter to bibliophiles is dreamlike and uncanny, grounded in deeply felt emotion, and absolutely thrilling.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review) [A] grad student discovers a mysterious book in his university library stacks…. What results is a magnificent quest,unfolding adventure and danger, gold-wrought fantasy, and endless provocation on what storytelling really means. Highly recommended.
Library Journal
(Starred review) Morgenstern's new fantasy epic is a puzzlebox of a book…, the very concept of what we expect and want from our stories…. She [gives] the book a mythic quality that will stick with readers long after they put it down. [R]eaders will be clamoring to recapture the magic of [her debut].
Booklist
(Starred review) A withdrawn graduate student embarks on an epic quest to restore balance to the world in this long-anticipated follow-up to The Night Circus.… This novel is a love letter to readers,… an ambitious and bewitching gem of a book with mystery and passion inscribed on every page.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE STARLESS SEA … and then take off on your own:
1. Talk about the underground realm of the Starless Sea. How would you describe the library to someone who has never read the book?
2. Three of the book's most prominent symbols, in a book full of them, are a sword, a key, and a bee. What is the role each symbol plays in the book and what does each signify, or represent?
3. One of the novel's central ideas is that we are our stories. How does this theme unfold during the course of the story?
4. (Follow-up to Question 3) In what way is this book about Zachary's life story—that as a child he made a choice not to open a magical door? What does he learn throughout this book about how that decision altered his life? What about turning points in your own life. Do you think back on some of them and wonder how a different decision might have led you on a completely different path?
5. (Follow-up to Question 4) The novel asks the question, if a single decision can alter the direction of our lives, to what degree are we in charge of our own stories/lives? Are our lives subject to fate, or destiny?
6. In what way is The Starless Sea also about how stories take over our lives? Zachary, for instance is presented with "a labyrinthine of tunnels and rooms filled with stories." How can he (or we) not be drawn in?
7. Morgenstern has packed her novel with literary allusions. Even Zachary's own name contains three of them. Can you unpack others: consider works by Lewis Carroll, Neil Gaiman, J.K. Rowling. J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Jules Verne. Can you identify others? Are the literary references clever "affectations," or do they actually affect the plot of the novel?
8. Which of the mysterious characters were you most puzzled by… intrigued by… or drawn to? Take any one of the following, for instance: Rhyme, the Keeper, Mirabel (is she Fate…or is she the Moon?), Allegra, Eleanor, and Simon. Any others?
9. Zachary observes at one point that reading a novel is like "playing a game where all the choices have been made for you ahead of time by someone who is much better at this particular game." Care to comment on that statement?
10. What was your experience reading The Starless Sea? Was it what you had hoped for? More than you'd hoped for? Less? Did you find yourself entering a world of enchantment… or a cluttered, confusing world? In other words, were you pleased or disappointed? How would you compare this book to Morgenstern's first, The Night Circus?
(Question by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)