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The Deep by Rivers Solomon

33 reviews

meshuganush's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book is one that I will be contemplating for a long time. The way it was written really allowed us to feel Yetu's constant pain and confusion as she tries to hold onto the history while still maintaining her own identity. This was a truly remarkable mythology based on the generational trauma of the middle passage. I didn't love the characters but I think that makes sense since Yetu's character was fairly subsumed by her role of holding the history.

I really loved the solution that they came up with and how her pain was lifted by being able to spread it out and share it with her people and by doing so she was also now able to see the beauty of the history and not just the pain.

I really recommend reading The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty, it is a spectacular nonfiction book where the author takes us through his journey to uncover the roots of southern cuisine as well as his roots as an African American whos ancestors were enslaved in the united states. It lends some beautiful context to the themes of homeland and ancestral history.

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biobeetle's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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pacifickat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was a wonderfully original fantasy novella with excellent world building, a unique culture, and themes of collective memory and belonging in tension with the main character's desire for self-determination and autonomy. It is also set against the horror of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the cruel deaths of so many abducted Africans at sea. The Wajinru, children of African pregnant mothers thrown overboard by cruel captors and transformed into merpeople, have a history marked by tremendous grief. What I liked best about the storytelling was the lyrical style employed when describing the Wajinru in the first half of the story, and again toward the end. As a chorus, their voice is stunningly rendered.

However, there was a section toward the middle where

Yetu, the main character and ‘memory keeper’ for her people, is separated from the rest of her culture. This was less interesting to me in terms of style, but necessary for the plot of the story. Yetu longs for self-determination, individual freedom, and to be an ‘I’ in a culture of ‘we’. It is her voice that annoyed me a bit, the inclusion of details about her romantic inclinations and sexual preferences as well as her personal curiosity regarding biological distinctions between humans and merpeople. I found the unique history and anthropology of the Wajinru far more captivating than the nitty gritty of their biology. Yet Yetu’s individuality is part of the point of the story, that she doesn’t want to be swallowed up and erased in a collective oneness with her people. And what is more individual than that which a person chooses to love, and how they choose to express their affection?

Ultimately this is a story about finding balance, between a traumatic past and a hopeful future, between individual and communal identity, between colonizing forces and indigenous cultures, and between the land and sea itself. It is also about remembering.

"Remember. […] That was all remembering was, prodding them lest they try to move on from things that should not be moved on from. Forgetting is not the same as healing.” - Yetu

"One can only go so long without asking, ‘Who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after?’ Without answers there is only a hole, a whole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities.” - Amamba

Yetu bears all of her people’s generational trauma, that is her role as ‘memory keeper’ in a society where long-term memory has largely been erased to give her people the freedom to thrive in the present unhindered by a painful past. She is their matriarch, but she is ill-suited for the role.

Out of an instinct for self-preservation, being unable to hold all of her peoples’ pain alone, she ultimately is the one to bring the wisdom of balance to the Wajinru.

"She couldn’t determine which was worse, the pain of the ancestors or the pain of the living. Both fed off her.”

"She learned how to make an inch for herself.”

"She touched each one of them, figuring out how each Wajinru was outside of the oneness the remembrance brought. That mattered. Who each of them was mattered as much as who all of them were together.”

"They could bear it all together.”

It is also a story about the function of memory in culture-making and identity.

One poignant detail is that Yetu and her romantic human interest, Oori, turn out to have come from the same distant ancestors. When Oori’s homeland is swallowed up by the sea, their history washed away, both characters lost something deep and sacred. However, they gained something as well, in the relationship they chose to forge in the present together.

In the afterward, The Deep is described as “a game of cumulative telephone.” The concept began as a song and was adapted over time by different musical groups until this novelization was produced.

“Each new telling of The Deep has been productive rather than destructive, and each new iteration has been carried out with admiration for the previous, […] happily taking on adaptations of each new interpreter into the future.”

This is a wonderful description of culture-making, the turning of ‘I’ into ‘we’, of carrying our stories, traumas, and longings together, erasing loneliness in the context of a communal tribe. It is forming collective memory, adapting a shared history into a cohesive perspective, a meaningful and unifying mythology.

"The living put their own mark on the dead.”

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shugentobler's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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miss_elease's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

most compelling intro to a book I've read in a long time
fucking brilliant afterword that is all the more appreciated after reading Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures
the juxtapositions and complications of one's relationship to time(s) is very well handled

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archaicrobin's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

An intricate and beautifully written story about a mermaid, called Wajinru, that is forced to remember everything for her people. Unable to bear the pain of all these memories alone she flees and finds solace in a two-legs who helps her realize the importance of belonging.

Alot of this story I don’t want to give away because the secrets are revealed as you go through Yetu’s rememberings. While focused on magical elements there is so much more to this novella then that and I highly recommend to anyone looking for something unique, lyrical, and moving.

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kanthereader's review against another edition

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adventurous informative sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Content Warnings

building_a_bookdom's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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pages_and_cacti's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Yetu, the Historian for the Wajinru, descendants of pregnant African slave women that were thrown into the ocean by slavers, wants to live a life of freedom from the history she holds for her kind. She must learn that her history is what makes the Wajinru who they are.

My thoughts: I actually enjoyed the story as a whole and the meaning of the importance of one’s history. I love the line, “We cannot understand a people that would willingly choose to cut itself off from its history, no matter what pain it entails”. Our history is who we are and should never be lost. The problem I had with the book, other reviews touted this as an LGBTQ+ book and I am not as convinced. While Yetu and Oora did develop a relationship, Oora was human and Yetu was a “mermaid”. The Wajinru were described as fish, had both sex organs, and also called an “animal” in the writing. This relationship would seem to be more like beastiality than a lesbian relationship. I understand that this is likely not what the writer meant to portray, but it came across that way to me.

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chalkletters's review against another edition

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challenging sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

Many years ago, after Twilight and Blood and Chocolate ushered YA paranormal romance through its vampire and werewolf phases, somebody in publishing promised me that mermaids would be next. As far as I’m aware, mermaids never hit those heights, but I was very excited to read The Deep, eve thoughts the focus of the novel was on more serious matters than romance.

The Deep’s creatures call themselves wajinru, rather than mermaids, and their origin is the pregnant slaves thrown overboard during the crossings of transatlantic slave ships. They are their own kind of fantasy creature, with their own history, culture and traditions, rather than drawing from existing mermaid folklore. Their struggle to deal with the traumatic memories of their species is obviously a metaphor for handling intergenerational trauma, and different characters deal with it in very different ways: by getting angry, by divorcing themselves from the history, by trying to protect others.

Fittingly, the narrative isn’t strictly linear. While Rivers Solomon writes mostly from Yetu’s perspective, her role as historian means the reader also experiences other lives. Zoti’s memories of the discovery and foundation of wajinru society, and their first encounter with humans, are particularly compelling. Yetu’s conversations with Oori, another human, were similarly well executed.

As is often the case with novellas, the story feels a little unbalanced. Yetu spends a lot of time thinking about the problem of the memories, which is all perfectly paced, and then the solution and ending all turn on a dime without really being given room to breathe. That said, it’s obvious from much earlier what the solution is likely to be, so it doesn’t feel out of place. While it would have been nice for Yetu to be able to brainstorm solutions, it’s thematically appropriate that she had to come to an answer on her own.

The Deep is a painful, hopeful book saying interesting things about truly important topics, and I would definitely recommend it.

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