The Odd Sea

The Odd Sea by Frederick Reiken is the story of a family coping with the disappearance of one of their own: a son and brother named Ethan. The Odd Sea is narrated by Ethan's younger brother, Philip, an observant young man who, maybe even more than anyone else, is having trouble accepting that Ethan won't be returning and that there aren't any answers to explain his disappearance.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from The Odd Sea. It's Reiken's debut novel, and I bought it at a library sale for $2.00 with a green "mystery" label on the side in goosebumps handwriting--not exactly a stellar recommendation. So, I've been putting off reading it for a while, letting it get lost in the back of my bookshelf while I read more well-known novels. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I finally got around to reading it.

The "mystery" label the library stuck to the spine is really a misnomer, more of an indication of the story's compelling narrative and the drive the reader feels to know and to understand than because of any actual mystery plot or tropes. Like Ethan's family and friends, the reader desperately wants to know what happened to Ethan. Reiken tantalizes the reader several times throughout the novel with possible solutions, each time hammering home the point that there is no solution. The mystery in The Odd Sea then isn't some formulaic story with all the facts outlined neatly at the end (as much as I love Agatha Christie, it does get a bit old sometimes), but an acknowledgement that life's questions about loss, death, and absence in all forms cannot be explained or made better, but must be accepted as part of life in order to move on.

Watching the characters deal with Ethan's disappearance was one of the most touching parts of the novel for me. I found especially heartbreaking the way Phillip and his older sister Halley had to assume the role of a comforter and almost parental figure while their mother was being treated for depression and their father was feverishly working to build a timber house. There were numerous touching scenes showing a broken family working to heal together in whatever way they can, which rang true to me.

I suppose one of my only faults with the book is with Ethan's characterization, though I'm not entirely sure whether to hate or love it. Ethan is inhuman in The Odd Sea, both in his ghostly presence weaving through the pages and the characters' lives, but also in the way his actions are so...contrived might be the right word. There was one scene in particular in which Ethan suddenly smashes a perfectly good guitar against a tree. It's a beautiful, startling moment, but it feels a little forced in that Reiken is trying to make Ethan appear mysterious. This could also just be a side-effect of Phillip, the narrator, idealizing and de-humanizing (forgetting about his "living, breathing, visible human body") Ethan, which is valid, but I also find characters like Victoria and Melissa to be equally contrivedly-unique.

Overall, The Odd Sea was an enjoyable and very fast read. I would recommend it, though if you're easy to cry have a box of tissues ready. Also, there are some...questionable sexy-times scenes, so anyone who finds cheating or large age-gaps between partners to be icky might want to steer clear.