by MadBob

Created on: February 16, 2007   Last Updated: November 16, 2011

The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall

Praise is mounting up for Steven Hall. At the tender age of 31, his startlingly ingenious first novel, 4 years in the writing and described by Yossarian at www.waterstones.com as "A cult classic in the waiting the best debut since Alex Garland's The Beach'," has already been snapped up 23 foreign publishers for translation, and is in the development stages for a movie tie-in. Hall, by his own admission, is "fire-fighting my own excitement!"

Born a humble Derbyshire lad, Hall moved to Sheffield to study Fine Art before investing his creativity in a number of projects, like Manchester's WetNana Collective, of which he was a founder member, music videos (see that of Fonda 500's second single Superchimpanzee') and a considerable output of short stories. Indeed, he has appeared in the Picador / British Council anthology New Writing 13' in 2005 and 'Not Jesus Yet' was included in The Edgier Waters', 5 Years of 3AM Magazine in 2006. Now, 'The Raw Shark Texts' is threatening to send Hall to the front of the class of 2007.

The central conceit of the novel is that a man suffering from what he is told is a psychotropic fugue, a complete break from his own memories, and is coming to terms with the fact that something is after him: in this case, rather improbably, it's a large, voracious but conceptual marine predator, the Ludovician. "I was thinking about all the water references you have when you talk about language and ideas and thought: stream of consciousness, flow of conversation, depths of the unconscious and stuff. I was imagining, if these really were streams and flows, what kind of animal would live there?" However, Hall pays particular attention to something far more commonplace. His protagonist, Eric Sanderson, has lost his girlfriend in a diving accident whilst on holiday. "I was interested in writing about love and loss. If you're really close to someone else, how much of you would you lose if that person went?" One can only speculate as to whether Hall himself has suffered such a loss, but the perspicacity with which he reveals Sanderson's acute trauma as the novel progresses would suggest Hall is no stranger to pain.

Hall has a bright future ahead. One of a growing group of authors using the internet phenomena MySpace as a promotional tool, his savvy, thrilling, and progressive literary style, reminiscent of Mark Z. Danielewski, is sure to win him widespread acclaim.

Hall sets out his stall early on. From the title itself

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