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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and my guest today is Chloe Oregius.

Her novel, published by Catapult, is called Sea Monsters.

I found it wonderful, fascinating, and it's a novel that's written

according to certain impulses that are rather, I think, mysterious.

The surface action of the book is that a young woman runs away from her home in Roma, in Mexico

city, with a boy, Thomas, and she goes to Oaxaca, to a coastal town.

What's the name of the town?

Sipolite.

Zipolite.

And she's not very interested in the boy.

She's interested in the movement of life, which becomes repetitive, resonant, and significant.

The things she sees around her are things that she's also learned about in her father's study. She has learned about shipwrecks,

and therefore she knows about sea monsters, the title of the book. Now, Chloe Eregis,

you have a PhD in French poetry and magic, which has led you to the beautiful poems about the sea by Baudelaire.

The book contains many shipwrecks within it. Damaged aquariums, lost objects at the bottom of the sea so that when you read

...