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Shark (novel)

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Shark
First edition (UK)
AuthorWill Self
LanguageEnglish
PublisherViking Press (UK)
Grove Press (US)
Publication date
United Kingdom - September 4
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Pages480pp
ISBN978-0-670-91857-7
Preceded byUmbrella 
Followed byPhone 

Shark is the tenth novel by Will Self, published in 2014.

Content

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The stream-of-consciousness novel continues the story of psychiatrist Zack Busner.

The novel is written in a flowing fashion without chapters and with no paragraph breaks. It is "a book-length paragraph, beginning and ending mid-sentence",[1] which hops "between characters and time periods with the agility of a mountain goat."[2]

Self indicated that Umbrella was the first part of a trilogy against his own initial expectations. The final part of the trilogy is Phone.

Plot

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Reviews

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The critical reception of Shark has been generally positive, with the challenging style of prose dividing opinion.

Writing for The Sunday Times, Theo Tait wrote...[3]

"Overall, Shark generates a dream-like synthesis of rational and irrational, familiar and strange... it’s clear that, with this trilogy, Self is creating something rather grand."

Stuart Kelly, writing for The Guardian wrote...[4]

"Shark" is angrier, more brutal and more intense: it made me furious, not melancholic. But the book itself is also a paean to books...."Shark" confirms that Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation, a writer whose formidable intellect is mercilessly targeted on the limits of the cerebral as a means of understanding. Yes, he makes you think, but he also insists that you feel"

Writing for the New York Times, Mark Athitakis wrote...[5]

"Shark often reads like a baggy mess. Yet it’s a mess that reflects a respectable urge to capture the mental and social collapse Self sees as a legacy of the world wars."

Writing for The Times, Melissa Katsoulis wrote...[6]

"It’s bewildering, exhausting and so relentlessly out of focus that unless you are a disenfranchised English student hopped up on caffeine pills and a hatred of Thomas Hardy, you’re unlikely to make it through to the end, still less part with nearly £20 for it."

References

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