I started reading The Starless Sea, by Erin Morgenstern, a week before social distancing went into place and the library closed its doors. At that point, I’d been waiting on the library’s hold list for five months to get my hands on this beautiful book. I didn’t want to make anyone else wait for longer than they absolutely had to, so I set aside my other book (sorry, Words of Radiance) and started to read.
The best way I can describe the experience of reading The Starless Sea is like drinking a perfectly-made yet unusual cocktail in a cozy bar on a winter night (side note: Morgenstern describes a lot of cocktails in this book and it made me want to try them all immediately). Since her debut novel, The Night Circus, Morgenstern has gained a reputation as a writer who writes beautiful, poetic scenic descriptions. She is a recorder of dreamlike worlds, and you get to experience these dreams alongside the characters. Every time I read a few chapters, I emerged feeling tipsy on her words and warm from the embrace of the scenes that she described.
“It is a sanctuary for storytellers and storykeepers and storylovers. They eat and sleep and dream surrounded by chronicles and histories and myths.”
Like so many young people, the protagonist of The Starless Sea feels strung along by life, afraid to make choices and wishing he could live inside a story. But when Zachary Ezra Rawlins finds a book that features him as the main character, he must learn that even fairy tales involve making choices. There is beauty in observing an ending, but also power in creating new beginnings. There is a story in everything, and one of the greatest acts of love is to share the stories you hold dear with someone else.
If it wasn’t already clear from this description, Morgenstern is not a writer of fast-paced, plot-driven books. She is a writer of poetry that happens to take the form of a book. This book is not for everybody, and it’s not even for every moment in someone’s life. But after being quarantined for two weeks and desperately needing a sense of beauty and hope in the world, it turned out that Morgenstern’s words were the balm that I was seeking. Reading the last pages of The Starless Sea made me smile, shake my head, and think to myself, “You’ve done it again, Morgenstern. You’ve made me believe in magic.”
“Not all stories speak to all listeners, but all listeners can find a story that does, somewhere, sometime. In one form or another.”
P.S. Did I mention that there are talking bees in this book, and squish-faced Persian cats? Because there are, and they’re adorable.