On Such A Full Sea

On Such A Full Sea is a 2014 novel by Chang-Rae Lee that explores themes of alienation, wealth, greed, ecology, freedom, and survival. The book is set in the future. America has fallen from grace. Society is strictly stratified into three classes. There are the Charter villages, which house the richest and most elite families. Then, there are the long-abandoned urban neighborhoods, which have been repurposed as high walled, self-contained labor colonies. Finally, there are the counties outside, where everyone else lives and tries to survive in a society where there is no law or structure. Members of the labor class, who are descendants of those brought over many years earlier from environmentally-ruined Asia, find purpose and identity in their work. They provide fruits, vegetables, and fish to the satellite charter villages that ring the labor settlement.

In B-Mor, one such labor colony, we meet Fan, a female fish-tank diver. Reg, the boyfriend she loves, mysteriously disappears one day without a trace, and so Fan leaves her home to find out what happened to him. Fan's journey to find him takes her farther than she has ever gone. First, she travels through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant and there is scant government oversight. She winds up at Quig’s compound, a facility where she sees how people live outside the safety of B-Mor for the first time. From there, she crosses paths with the Nickelmans, a strange and cruel troupe of performers, and makes her way to a faraway Charter village, where she finds out how the other end of the class spectrum lives. She experiences depravity and pains of the heart in the mansion of Mister Leo and Miss Cathy, finds new friends in the social circles of Doctor Vik Upendra, and even happens upon a long-lost brother whose motivations are suspect and twisted.

Her quest slowly becomes a legend to those she left behind and through her actions, she begins to change the entire makeup of her society. Her choices and determination through all these adventures bring her to the final choice: where should she go, with all the possibilities in the world open to her?