The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall

A man wakes up on the floor of his home with no memory of who he is or what has happened to him. All he has left of his previous life is an angry-looking ginger tom called Ian. He finds out that his name is Eric Sanderson and that his problems began when his girlfriend Clio died in an accident three years ago. Letters and parcels arrive from “The First Eric Sanderson” which explain that his memories have been eaten by a conceptual shark called The Ludovician.

When I was a little girl, someone at school told me about the film Jaws, and this gave me nightmares about a sort of shark which could swim through floors, with its dorsal fin sticking out of the carpet. I've revisited those nightmares in this book as Eric tries to find a way to destroy The Ludovician before it eats the rest of his mind. As the Ludovician is a conceptual fish, sometimes only its fin pokes through into reality. Scary...

One of my favourite sections of the book is when the First Eric Sanderson explains to the second how he allowed the Ludovician out into the world from the bottom a pit in un-space:

Down at the bottom there was a place filled with was rows and rows of stinking neglected fish tanks with sick, dead and dying fish; a horrible abandoned aquarium.

Reading those words took me back instantly to the aquarium underneath Blackpool Tower. It probably wasn't as nightmarish in reality as it seems in my memory (I was very small when I went there) but I can't help thinking that Mr Hall might have been.

This was a strange, enjoyable and unashamedly clever book. It seems to have a target audience of people who enjoy both Jaws and Borges. I think some readers are likely to be annoyed by the typographic tricks. For example, in places the words are laid out to form the shape of a shark or a remora and part of the novel works as a flick book – I thought that was quite smart though.

Read it, read it, read it. If you don't I will come round your house with my copy and stand over you until you do.

You can watch the Ludovician sneaking up on The Second Eric Sanderson through his telly on the video below. Have a cushion ready to hide behind...