Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
The past was not a thread trailing behind us but an anchor.
‘Any decisions we make are only mirages,’ the narrator of Daisy Johnson’s first novel, Everything Under, is told by her mother, ‘ghosts to convince us of free will.’ Everything Under is a blissfully accomplished novel that follows the intertwined narratives of people who are trying to escape from their personal history as much as they are trying to uncover and understand their history. The three principal character lead lives that are a reaction to their respective pasts, simultaneously resisting and enabling the notion that fate is something ‘coded into us from the moment we are born’. While not as fantastical as the wildly imaginative stories in [b:Fen|26210520|Fen|Daisy Johnson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1469103124l/26210520._SX50_.jpg|46190777]--Johnson's debut collection--Everything Under maintains the ineffable terror and tension of fairy tales through a near-elusive narrative approach that teases the reader forward as if hunting them. Through playful homages and modern updates on several traditional tales, a non-linear story that coils through the various timelines like a serpent trapping its prey, and an effortless prose that illuminates the whole tale, Everything Under is a success that makes up for its shortcomings.
Gretel is attempting to track down her mother, Sarah, who abandoned her as a teen. Seeking her mother, however, also means dredging up painful memories. Her memories are often just out of the grasp from clear recall, many of which have been suppressed as a method of escaping them. However, she cannot escape and these memories start crawling back as if from the grave and force her to confront them.
Language and its fluidity are central to the heart of Everything Under. While this could have--and preferably should have--been more thoroughly mined in the novel, the way it functions in conjunction with the nuances of the novel from gender themes narratorial approach are rather effective. The novel builds in tension by fluidly sashaying across various timelines and perspectives in an episodic fashion. Events are scattered but in a way that best inform the flow of events ‘as if decisions were shards from the bombs of our previous actions’. Major chapter headings such as “The Cottage” (the novel’s present), “The River” and “The Hunt” work as signposts to keep the reader from becoming unmoored and these narratives spiral together in a way that makes them greater than the sum of their parts by emphasizing an orchestrated rising/falling action with each timeline harmonizing effectively with the others. The Eight “parts” of the novel are thematically contained and controlled in a way that feels as if the novel were a mini-series with episode breaks. Perhaps the appeal of mini-series narratives are spilling into fiction (or vice versa), but it creates a very modern storytelling effect. This is particularly interesting given the traditional stories being retold or nodded to within the novel and the stylization makes the updates all the more engrossing.
Gender, like language, is a malleable construct explored in the novel as well and best exemplified in the characters of Fiona and Margot/Marcus. Like Gretel, Haunted by a fateful, prophetic vision from Fiona, Marcus has fled their past but finds that no matter how they try to escape, their anchor to fate catches up with them. Beginning life as a child found down by the river and adopted by parent she never knew were not her own, Margot spends much of the novel trying to find an identity. ‘She wanted to find a body and movement that suited her. But she did not wear any of them well.’ Marot becomes Marcus, yet still retains an unnerved lack of bearings. Johnson uses the gender fluidity for great purpose, both as a way to execute the surprises of plot but also to look at the way gender can be uncertain. The gender changes are Marcus’ way to escape, but also become the avenue to walk directly into Fiona’s prophecy.
The novel mostly turns its attention to questions of fate vs free will and examines how our decisions propell us on a trajectory towards our future selves. If the trajectory can be altered is the real question, and if we spend our lives running from our past does it mean that the past is, like a hunting dog, chasing us right into its trap? This is much like the old tale "The Appointment in Samarra" where a merchant, so frightened by seeing Death gesturing to him in a marketplace in Baghdad, flees to hide in the town of Samarra. Death, it is revealed, was just as shocked to see the merchant since he had an appointment with the merchant that night in Samarra.
Some run, like Marcus and the merchant, yet some--like Sarah--try to kill the past. The Bonak, a mysterious creature killing animals and people along the river, may or may not have been created out of Sarah’s fear and escape from her past. In trying to atone for what she cannot bear to remember, she may have created a monster that may or may not exist. Near the end of the novel it is mentioned that she has been hunting it for so long she’d forgotten she wanted to kill it and why--a sad fate derived out of the rebellion against fate. Marcus, as well, may have created the “canal thief” from their own anxieties, and while it is implied they are running from the same monster, both of them feel they are being the ones singled out by it. All leading to a well-orchestrated conclusion.
If we were turned inside out there would be maps cut into the wrong side of our skin. Just so we can find our way back.
Johnson is most engrossing when discussing how memories attach themselves like burrs to places and people. The land and people of the ‘long-lost trailing river--a spine against the backbone of the country’ are brought to life through some of the strongest prose in the novel and retain a sense of wilderness through eerie metaphors that form a fractious yet comforting wasteland (not unlike the mother, Sarah). It makes one reflect back on their own personal history and how often location is embedded in the aesthetic of memory. People are also a way we stick our memories to emotional context. For Gretel, the return to the past is more about Sarah than the riverboat they lived on. Family lineage becomes another way to remain trapped in the aim of fate, with children continuing our legacy because ‘children are a map of genes’.
All of these elements combine to create a well-crafted update on traditional tales. While the narrative examines the way history reveals itself in the present, the novel itself is an examination of old stories and fairy tales can grow within a modern context. Hansel and Gretel is one of the several updates working as an undercurrent in the novel and as much more than simply breadcrumbs of memory leading the way home. The fairy tale begins with the children being abandoned in the woods by their parents, much like Gretel in the story--and the lost dog she brings with her and loses near the river--but also the ways other characters are abandoned in their own figurative wilderness. The primary update of a tale that drives the narrative is especially interesting to examine through the new lens of gender fluidity and fate. I won’t mention the name (and it’s disappointing how so much of the marketing material and blurbs give it away) as it's better to approach the novel without being told exactly what it is this book is a retelling, but the way Johnson plays with the narrative and characters is both refreshing and progressive while also revealing the cruelties of a world pre-ordained by fate.
Daisy Johnson has given us a wonderful novel with well-executed plotting and narrative and plenty of nuances to treat the mind. While the novel was extremely engaging and easy to get lost within, many of the philosophical inquires could have been far more elaborated on, particularly the way language figures into the book. Despite a few setbacks, the novel succeeds at satisfying it’s goals and was rightfully short-listed for the Man Booker Prize as a result. The prose is a thing to behold, and Johnsons current of words flows swift and true through a rich linguistic landscape that will both unnerve and welcome the reader. Everything Under is a successful update on old tales that manages to retain the timeless quality while still feeling very modern. Johnson is a very gifted writer and I very much look forward to reading more of her.
3.5/5
The places we are born come back. They disguise themselves as migraines, stomach aches, insomnia. They are the way we sometimes wake falling, fumbling for the bedside lamp, certain everything we've built has gone in the night. We become strangers to the places we are born. They would not recognize us but we will always recognize them. They are marrow to us; they are bred into us.
‘Any decisions we make are only mirages,’ the narrator of Daisy Johnson’s first novel, Everything Under, is told by her mother, ‘ghosts to convince us of free will.’ Everything Under is a blissfully accomplished novel that follows the intertwined narratives of people who are trying to escape from their personal history as much as they are trying to uncover and understand their history. The three principal character lead lives that are a reaction to their respective pasts, simultaneously resisting and enabling the notion that fate is something ‘coded into us from the moment we are born’. While not as fantastical as the wildly imaginative stories in [b:Fen|26210520|Fen|Daisy Johnson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1469103124l/26210520._SX50_.jpg|46190777]--Johnson's debut collection--Everything Under maintains the ineffable terror and tension of fairy tales through a near-elusive narrative approach that teases the reader forward as if hunting them. Through playful homages and modern updates on several traditional tales, a non-linear story that coils through the various timelines like a serpent trapping its prey, and an effortless prose that illuminates the whole tale, Everything Under is a success that makes up for its shortcomings.
Gretel is attempting to track down her mother, Sarah, who abandoned her as a teen. Seeking her mother, however, also means dredging up painful memories. Her memories are often just out of the grasp from clear recall, many of which have been suppressed as a method of escaping them. However, she cannot escape and these memories start crawling back as if from the grave and force her to confront them.
I'd always understood that the past did not die just because we wanted it to. The past signed to us: clicks and cracks in the night, misspelled words, the jargon of adverts, the bodies that attracted us or did not, the sounds that reminded us of this or that.Growing up amidst the secluded society of folks living along the river in Southern England (it is frequently mentioned that the river folk don’t trust police and “take care” of issues themselves, an ominous phrase that works as another brick in the untamed tone which permeates the novel), her childhood was tinged with wildness and, while she is haunted by their past, she is living a present deeply rooted in her personal history. Having an invented language she spoke with her mother--a major joy in the novel are the words like duvduv (best translated as anything comforting), sheesh time (being alone), or effing (the sound the river makes as if moves) being used with the prose understood by the reader as a method of pulling you into the logic of the novel--and growing up with the encyclopedia as her primary reading material, it seems fitting that Gretel now works as a lexicographer. However, try as she might to neatly capture reality in words, her own reality escapes her, particularly the one attached to the most fearsome word from her childhood: the deadly bonak which stalked them and the mysterious stranger they befriended one fateful winter.
Language and its fluidity are central to the heart of Everything Under. While this could have--and preferably should have--been more thoroughly mined in the novel, the way it functions in conjunction with the nuances of the novel from gender themes narratorial approach are rather effective. The novel builds in tension by fluidly sashaying across various timelines and perspectives in an episodic fashion. Events are scattered but in a way that best inform the flow of events ‘as if decisions were shards from the bombs of our previous actions’. Major chapter headings such as “The Cottage” (the novel’s present), “The River” and “The Hunt” work as signposts to keep the reader from becoming unmoored and these narratives spiral together in a way that makes them greater than the sum of their parts by emphasizing an orchestrated rising/falling action with each timeline harmonizing effectively with the others. The Eight “parts” of the novel are thematically contained and controlled in a way that feels as if the novel were a mini-series with episode breaks. Perhaps the appeal of mini-series narratives are spilling into fiction (or vice versa), but it creates a very modern storytelling effect. This is particularly interesting given the traditional stories being retold or nodded to within the novel and the stylization makes the updates all the more engrossing.
Gender, like language, is a malleable construct explored in the novel as well and best exemplified in the characters of Fiona and Margot/Marcus. Like Gretel, Haunted by a fateful, prophetic vision from Fiona, Marcus has fled their past but finds that no matter how they try to escape, their anchor to fate catches up with them. Beginning life as a child found down by the river and adopted by parent she never knew were not her own, Margot spends much of the novel trying to find an identity. ‘She wanted to find a body and movement that suited her. But she did not wear any of them well.’ Marot becomes Marcus, yet still retains an unnerved lack of bearings. Johnson uses the gender fluidity for great purpose, both as a way to execute the surprises of plot but also to look at the way gender can be uncertain. The gender changes are Marcus’ way to escape, but also become the avenue to walk directly into Fiona’s prophecy.
The novel mostly turns its attention to questions of fate vs free will and examines how our decisions propell us on a trajectory towards our future selves. If the trajectory can be altered is the real question, and if we spend our lives running from our past does it mean that the past is, like a hunting dog, chasing us right into its trap? This is much like the old tale "The Appointment in Samarra" where a merchant, so frightened by seeing Death gesturing to him in a marketplace in Baghdad, flees to hide in the town of Samarra. Death, it is revealed, was just as shocked to see the merchant since he had an appointment with the merchant that night in Samarra.
Some run, like Marcus and the merchant, yet some--like Sarah--try to kill the past. The Bonak, a mysterious creature killing animals and people along the river, may or may not have been created out of Sarah’s fear and escape from her past. In trying to atone for what she cannot bear to remember, she may have created a monster that may or may not exist. Near the end of the novel it is mentioned that she has been hunting it for so long she’d forgotten she wanted to kill it and why--a sad fate derived out of the rebellion against fate. Marcus, as well, may have created the “canal thief” from their own anxieties, and while it is implied they are running from the same monster, both of them feel they are being the ones singled out by it. All leading to a well-orchestrated conclusion.
If we were turned inside out there would be maps cut into the wrong side of our skin. Just so we can find our way back.
Johnson is most engrossing when discussing how memories attach themselves like burrs to places and people. The land and people of the ‘long-lost trailing river--a spine against the backbone of the country’ are brought to life through some of the strongest prose in the novel and retain a sense of wilderness through eerie metaphors that form a fractious yet comforting wasteland (not unlike the mother, Sarah). It makes one reflect back on their own personal history and how often location is embedded in the aesthetic of memory. People are also a way we stick our memories to emotional context. For Gretel, the return to the past is more about Sarah than the riverboat they lived on. Family lineage becomes another way to remain trapped in the aim of fate, with children continuing our legacy because ‘children are a map of genes’.
All of these elements combine to create a well-crafted update on traditional tales. While the narrative examines the way history reveals itself in the present, the novel itself is an examination of old stories and fairy tales can grow within a modern context. Hansel and Gretel is one of the several updates working as an undercurrent in the novel and as much more than simply breadcrumbs of memory leading the way home. The fairy tale begins with the children being abandoned in the woods by their parents, much like Gretel in the story--and the lost dog she brings with her and loses near the river--but also the ways other characters are abandoned in their own figurative wilderness. The primary update of a tale that drives the narrative is especially interesting to examine through the new lens of gender fluidity and fate. I won’t mention the name (and it’s disappointing how so much of the marketing material and blurbs give it away) as it's better to approach the novel without being told exactly what it is this book is a retelling, but the way Johnson plays with the narrative and characters is both refreshing and progressive while also revealing the cruelties of a world pre-ordained by fate.
Daisy Johnson has given us a wonderful novel with well-executed plotting and narrative and plenty of nuances to treat the mind. While the novel was extremely engaging and easy to get lost within, many of the philosophical inquires could have been far more elaborated on, particularly the way language figures into the book. Despite a few setbacks, the novel succeeds at satisfying it’s goals and was rightfully short-listed for the Man Booker Prize as a result. The prose is a thing to behold, and Johnsons current of words flows swift and true through a rich linguistic landscape that will both unnerve and welcome the reader. Everything Under is a successful update on old tales that manages to retain the timeless quality while still feeling very modern. Johnson is a very gifted writer and I very much look forward to reading more of her.
3.5/5
The places we are born come back. They disguise themselves as migraines, stomach aches, insomnia. They are the way we sometimes wake falling, fumbling for the bedside lamp, certain everything we've built has gone in the night. We become strangers to the places we are born. They would not recognize us but we will always recognize them. They are marrow to us; they are bred into us.
Re-tellings often have to go to great lengths to ensure links to the original source material are maintained and this is often at the expense of the narrative. EVERYTHING UNDER suffers because of this. I appreciate the attempt – a trans re-telling of Oedipus is no mean feat – but am perhaps a little weary of source material dominating a contemporary narrative. Also, this is a challenging read and I’m not sure that it’s ultimately worth all that effort. That said, I love the faith Johnson places in her reader.
It's kind of weird, specially the writing style, but I kind of liked it until the end. It's unnecesarily fucked up
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
totally eerie!! really enjoyable, but somehow JUST missed the mark of 4/5 stars. was absolutely eating up the atmosphere and non linear narrative. such a murky book. deathly and a bit sick and sad. almost cried but didn't. I loved the lexicon. ending was PERHAPS a bit rushed, but I don't think I've read a single novel in the last 2 years that didn't have that problem.
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
haunting and tragic
however, the plot aboutMarcus and Sarah felt a bit forced to conform with the Greek myth
beautiful and intensely sorrowful depiction of language / memory / love as twisted by dementia (esp as someone whose grandmother also suffered from alzheimer’s)
however, the plot about
beautiful and intensely sorrowful depiction of language / memory / love as twisted by dementia
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes