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sophia_ryann's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Blood and Slavery
Moderate: Colonisation and Grief
Minor: Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Suicidal thoughts
bucketsjen's review against another edition
- 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
4.5
Has themes of cultural, generational, and personal trauma, the pain of being the only one who Knows and Understands, and processing/healing to move forward. It's REALLY well done. While the subject matter is heavy, it's managed deftly and the book is surprisingly healing to read.
I really recommend the audiobook for this one. Daveed Diggs does an incredible job, and the work's musical history really lends it to auditory retelling. There's an Afterward by Diggs which was an awesome addition to the story (he's funny and insightful).
Graphic: Slavery and Grief
Moderate: Child death, Violence, Self harm, Animal death, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Death
Animal death, Attempted suicide, Grief, Hallucinations, Slavery (past), Self-harm, Trauma (personal, generational, cultural), violence, references to familial death.numerous_bees's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Abandonment, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Death, Ableism, Panic attacks/disorders, Animal death, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Violence
Moderate: Death, Colonisation, Blood, Child death, Slavery, Genocide, Pregnancy, and Animal death
Minor: Racism, Sexual content, and Fire/Fire injury
sproutedpages's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Violence, Slavery, and Grief
Moderate: Pregnancy
biobeetle's review
- 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
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, Grief, Body horror, Blood, and Colonisation
Moderate: Medical content, War, Suicide attempt, Death, Violence, Pregnancy, and Racism
Minor: Child death
ginalucia's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Grief, Slavery, and Death
Moderate: Pregnancy
pacifickat's review against another edition
- 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
However, there was a section toward the middle where
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.
"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.
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.”
Graphic: Blood, Colonisation, Death, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, War, Slavery, Toxic relationship, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Pregnancy, Trafficking, Violence, Self harm, and Sexual content
Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Ableism, and Animal death
drowning, shark attacks, birth, biting, neurodivergence, generational trauma, collective traumameant2breading's review against another edition
- 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? Yes
4.5
Though this story was a novella, it contained a tremendous amount of depth, especially reflecting on collective and generational trauma, and how that can manifest in the body. The build around this as well as the journey of Yetu was a beautiful reading experience. Also, I love an underwater world! Without question will be on my reread list. The only reason I didn’t give it five stars is because I felt the ending came too quickly.
Graphic: Slavery and Death
Moderate: Grief
viivacious's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Death, Grief, Slavery, and Murder
gatorskulls's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Graphic: Slavery and Grief
Moderate: Pregnancy and Suicide attempt
Minor: Vomit