Not a terribly innovative or 'deep' book, despite its attempts. A definite pastiche of the po-mo/intellectual/post-Danielewski lit from a few years ago. But, I will admit that it was a nice end-of-summer read. Perched on the back of my toilet, 'The Raw Shark Texts' (*groan* at that pun) was sufficiently engaging in the 'oh no, my legs fell asleep on the crapper!' sort of way. I'm sure I'm not the only one to have that happen. ( )

What an excellent book. I could not put this one down. I would put this book in the same space as the House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. A very interesting concept, and fascinating way of dealing with grief. I am very looking forward to other works by this author. ( )

was easy to read quickly. it kept moving, even if I thought the original idea of a conceptual shark got a bit old after a bit. ( )

The Raw Shark Texts is a hugely successful book released in 2007 by first time U.K. author, Steven Hall. Raw Shark has often been referred as some bizarre cross between Jaws and The Matrix with perhaps a little Da Vinci Code thrown in there for good measure. Raw Shark follows the story of Eric Saunderson who awakes on his bedroom floor without any personal memories or ideas. The man remembers his basic motor functions but nothing resembling emotions or sense of identity. Shortly upon awaking, Eric finds a note left by the "first Eric Saunderson" with basic instructions on how to resume his life. From this point forward a proverbial can of worms is opened and the mystery unfolds itself in an addictive way, by which I mean, it's really hard to put this book down.

As I said earlier, I had an experience like this a few months back when I read "House of Leaves". The stories are quite different but the layout is just as ambitious. While Danielewski goes above and beyond with liner and foot notes as well as scratches and interchanging fonts, Hall goes with long gaps of pages with little to no words as well as diagrams and exhibits. The changing style throughout the novel really adds to the experiment and gets the reader more and more involved in what is happening to Eric's world.

Apparently, the novel has been shopped around in Hollywood for the last two years with hopes of a silver screen adaptation to be placed in the works but it has yet to be purchased. There is, however, a screen play written by the same person behind "Slumdog Millionaire". Some people might say that it would be a challenge to film, while I agree it has it's difficult areas, I would say this book is just screaming to be a feature film.

Continuing with what I had said in the opening, Matty has led me to yet another terrific author. While Hall is working on a second book, whether he can produce something on par to Raw Shark Texts remains to be seen but I know that I'll be checking it out. So, it was a good read, a repeat read for me at some point. ( )

The one thing bothering me most is that the book is full of potential, but unfortunately the author doesn't seem to notice it. The potential lies in the theory that the world, society, gender, whatever, is a construction of words and language - what will happen when the basic construction material is taken away by a word/memory-eating shark, when someone sees the "matrix" and can finally question it? But blah, as I read further, it became clearer and clearer that this was going to turn out to be a general dull-minded romance without a "deeper meaning" (or at least the meaning got lost along the way). ( )