The Sea Lady

The Sea Lady is H. G. Wells at his most unexpected - a tender, witty fable about a mermaid who comes ashore seeking a soul. When the ethereal Sea Lady washes up on a Folkestone beach, she is rescued by the Bunting family, whose quiet summer is upended by this creature from another world. As she attempts to pass as human and win the soul she believes only humans possess, Wells orchestrates a delicious collision between the fantastical and the thoroughly mundane. What follows is part fairy tale, part sharp social satire. The Sea Lady moves through seaside hotels and garden parties with beguiling otherness, while the Buntings and their guests grapple with what it means to harbor something truly unknown. Wells uses the mermaid's longing for legitimacy to expose the performed nature of human society itself. For readers who know Wells only through Martian invasions and time machines, this 1902 novel reveals another dimension entirely - a writer capable of wistful, melancholic charm.