Review: The Swallowed Man (Edward Carrey)

This book is so weird in the best possible way. I hadn’t read a novel in almost two years before picking this one up this past January, and it was the perfect reintroduction to reading for pleasure. 

Edward Carey’s The Swallowed Man is a retelling of Pinocchio. A lonely woodcarver, Geppetto, carves a boy out of wood in the hopes that it will make him a fortune, only to find that he has created a being capable of yearning for freedom, challenging authority, and demanding rights as a human. The boy runs away from home, and a heartbroken Geppetto goes after him, eventually finding himself swallowed by a sea monster. In the belly of the fish, Geppetto pens a heartbreaking story that sometimes reads more like a poem than literary fiction, laced with odd illustrations and observations that pull you right into his peculiar mind. 

This is the sort of book that may disappoint those readers who have clear expectations before actually reading page one. I am not that sort of reader, so I loved it. 

Part of me wished that it had been longer because the more I sank into the story, the more comfortable I became with losing myself in a novel again, but at the same time, part of the beauty of the read is that it is short and sweet. It implied so much more than what was on the page and posed more questions than it answered while still feeling like a fully-fledged story and world. Carey’s soft world-building felt like a warm blanket, even when the world of the story was anything but. 

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who reads to experience something new.