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A review by zlicaanica
Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn
5.0
This is one of my favorites.
I came across it in the library for kids, and I must have been between 10 and 13. The power of this book blew me away, and I knew, when I finished, just how much one novel is capable of saying. I actually think it's one of the reasons I even started reading. Well, one of the reasons I started loving reading, and definitely the reason I'm so throes-of-ecstasy into gritty psychological drama (though I've graduated to adult-oriented novels in the meantime). I came across it at a book fair a year or two ago - this old, great copy - and I haven't stopped handing it to people ever since.
It's written very simply, but something about the simplicity makes it eloquent and direct enough that I still consider it one of the most powerful reads I can remember influencing me.
I still think about that poem with the green-eyed dragon, and how shaken I was by the fact that people saw in him the monster he saw in his father, and how petrifying that must've been. "Breathing underwater", as a state of fear and anxiety, and as a symbol, stays with me to this day.
YA is not my cup of tea, but when I come across a YA novel that boasts "deeply exploring a tough subject", this is the reason I give it a chance. But fact is, I haven't yet come across one that comes even close to it.
I came across it in the library for kids, and I must have been between 10 and 13. The power of this book blew me away, and I knew, when I finished, just how much one novel is capable of saying. I actually think it's one of the reasons I even started reading. Well, one of the reasons I started loving reading, and definitely the reason I'm so throes-of-ecstasy into gritty psychological drama (though I've graduated to adult-oriented novels in the meantime). I came across it at a book fair a year or two ago - this old, great copy - and I haven't stopped handing it to people ever since.
It's written very simply, but something about the simplicity makes it eloquent and direct enough that I still consider it one of the most powerful reads I can remember influencing me.
I still think about that poem with the green-eyed dragon, and how shaken I was by the fact that people saw in him the monster he saw in his father, and how petrifying that must've been. "Breathing underwater", as a state of fear and anxiety, and as a symbol, stays with me to this day.
YA is not my cup of tea, but when I come across a YA novel that boasts "deeply exploring a tough subject", this is the reason I give it a chance. But fact is, I haven't yet come across one that comes even close to it.