For the first time in a long time, I’ve had the luxury of enjoying a novel.  It’s one I’ve been intrigued about since I first came across it, Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts.  Oh, the fun I had reading it…Hall’s mind fizzes with playful concepts and allies them to a coherent and emotionally involving narrative.  Exactly the kind of blend I aspire to as a screenwriter in fact.

The story concerns one Eric Sanderson, for whom normal life is anything but.  He’s suffering from amnesia, and comes across clues to what he’s been up to that he’s created for himself.  So far, nothing exceptional: there’s something about amnesia that writers glom onto, and audiences can enjoy too, as the success of Jason Bourne’s adventures demonstrates.

Come to think, Eric Sanderson does have something in common with Jason Bourne, following a madcap trail to discover the truth about his identity while at the same time being pursued by…this is where things depart from the world of Mr Bourne.  Eric Sanderson is being pursued by a conceptual shark, the Ludovician, an entity that exists within language and ideas.  A rather different sort of antagonist than the more straighforward asshats that Jason Bourne gets to take on, it has to be said.

The notion of the Ludovician is fascinating, and the whole has a feel like a new take on Lovecraft by someone who’s read their semiotics.  Which could come across as appallingly pretentious, but works really well since Hall remembers to make the story an exciting one where there’s lots at stake, and the characters are easy to empathise with.  And, guess what, Film Four have optioned the film rights, which Hall and fans are discussing over here, though what follows comes without me having read the forum.

The key to catching and killing a conceptual shark is to trap it with information.  Sanderson sits in the midst of four Dictaphones where strangers recount random tales, in a room made of copies of Yellow Pages: the sheer volume of data is enough for the Ludovician to lose Sanderson’s trail.  Which leads me to think that if I was adapting the story for screen, I’d push that notion of data-play: since the story alludes to Jaws and is reminiscent of an inventive computer game, why not portray some of it in the form of a game?  Morphing between flesh and blood and digital representations would suit the story well, and I’d like to play with what happens onscreen in the same fashion that Crank did.

The heart of the story is a romantic adventure: Eric is on the run accompanied by the story’s very own Lara Croft stand-in, a daring young woman called Scout who more and more comes to resemble his departed love Clio.  Along the way they encounter an ally in the form of Dr Trey Fidorus, an authority on conceptual entities, and the three of them take on the Ludovician and triumph.  Straightforward enough, which with the addition of some fizzing ideas makes a great yarn that I’d love to see served in the same kind of witty and touching fashion as the conceptually intriguing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Now, I’m no Charlie Kaufman (who as well as Sunshine has written other mindbending and heartwrenching tales such as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation), but that’s the sort of energy I’d love to bring to an adapatation of a book that’s excited me more than anything I’ve read for a good while.  And even if I don’t get to adapt The Raw Shark Texts — I must after all accept the possibility that my audacity will be unwelcome — the story will influence the way I’d like to tell some of my own yarns.