Reviews tagging 'Grief'

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

94 reviews

biobeetle's review against another edition

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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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ginalucia's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced
  • 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

 
The Deep is a must-read for anyone interested in exploring the complexities of history and humanity in a deeply moving way.

I was immediately drawn in by the story's atmosphere - it's incredibly immersive and gripping right from the start. It eases you into its world before taking you on an emotional rollercoaster.

The Deep is a beautifully haunting tale that forces you to confront the harsh realities of slavery while also offering a glimpse of hope for healing and growth.

Throughout the novella, it delves into themes of generational trauma, memory, and the search for belonging, making it a deeply thought-provoking read.

The writing style is dark and lyrical, which I found intense in the best possible way. Despite its shorter length, the story packs a powerful punch. I won’t be forgetting this read.

As a bonus, I highly recommend reading the afterward, as it offers insights into the creation of The Deep.

For more reviews and book recommendations, check out my YouTube channel:  https://www.youtube.com/ginaluciayt 

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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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meant2breading's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

4.5

“Who each of them was mattered as much as who all of them were together.”

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 wanted the book to be longer so I could read and enjoy even more. 

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viivacious's review against another edition

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challenging dark hopeful sad fast-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes

3.0

The narration is good. I don't think I would have gone through with it in print, since I have trouble reading dark stuff. It was good, and the ending was nice. Still, the generational trauma can be a little too hard to deal with if you're not in the right head space.

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gatorskulls's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad fast-paced
  • 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


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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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scrubsandbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional 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? Yes

5.0

A beautifully rich and haunting setting. It's a short book but it packed one hell of a punch that I simultaneously believe it was perfect and also wish it was longer. The Deep takes on an incredibly traumatic real life situation and turns it into something with a sense of community. Such an impactful message behind it, I implore everyone to give this book a try. The narration is also done by Daveed Diggs and was chef's kiss.

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workingdaley's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense fast-paced
  • 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

I found this book to be deeply profound, I was captivated by the world building and felt
everything that happened on a personal level. This book has the potential to provoke an intriguing conversation about carrying generational trauma
and had a surprisingly profound, though brief
conversation about gender. Aside from "The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm" and "Black Panther," I can't say that I'm too familiar with Afrofuturist
media. But this book made me want to explore more Afrofuturist media. If you haven't heard the song
that this book is based off of, I recommend you listen to that too, It's also called The Peep and it's by the band .clippings. It's very experiential so it might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I personally enjoyed it. I'm glad that I came across this book, I'm looking forward to seeing what Rivers Solomon
has in store next, since they'll be publishing another novel next year. (I'll also have to get my hands on their other book, An Unkindness of Ghosts)

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charrlee's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-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

5.0

"'What is belonging?' we ask.
She says, 'Where loneliness ends.'" (Solomon 49)

"How disorienting it is to go most of your life wondering about a thing, only to happen upon the answer, and it is a horror." (Solomon 57).

River Solomon's novella is profoundly atmospheric. I've never connected to a work so deeply and I will continue to be spellbound by Solomon's beautifully tragic narrative. Listen to "The Deep" by clipping. to see the inspiration and building of the mythos. I am thrilled for my future reread. 

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