The novel is written in a flowing fashion without chapters and with no paragraph breaks. It is "a book-length paragraph, beginning and ending mid-sentence",[1] which hops "between characters and time periods with the agility of a mountain goat."[2]
Self indicated that Umbrella was the first part of a trilogy against his own initial expectations. The final part of the trilogy is Phone.
"Overall, Shark generates a dream-like synthesis of rational and irrational, familiar and strange... it’s clear that, with this trilogy, Self is creating something rather grand."
"Shark" is angrier, more brutal and more intense: it made me furious, not melancholic. But the book itself is also a paean to books...."Shark" confirms that Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation, a writer whose formidable intellect is mercilessly targeted on the limits of the cerebral as a means of understanding. Yes, he makes you think, but he also insists that you feel"
"Shark often reads like a baggy mess. Yet it’s a mess that reflects a respectable urge to capture the mental and social collapse Self sees as a legacy of the world wars."
Writing for The Times, Melissa Katsoulis wrote...[6]
"It’s bewildering, exhausting and so relentlessly out of focus that unless you are a disenfranchised English student hopped up on caffeine pills and a hatred of Thomas Hardy, you’re unlikely to make it through to the end, still less part with nearly £20 for it."
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