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This strange elegy of madness, loss, and great love filled me up and hollowed me out with a longing so specific, so cutting and nostalgic, I’ve never seen it articulated by anyone but Samantha Hunt.
The exploration of the multiplicities within language, words, and etymology is not only thematic; it anchors the story in myriad interpretations that can exist simultaneously, slipping and defying expectations just as the narrator strains to transcend small town life, familial trauma, and, ultimately, herself. It’s archetypal, yes, but so deeply embodied that the characters’ aches become the reader’s own.
Essentially, the novel asks: What if your most tender, magical truth were treated as madness? And answers: It would still be true. But it might destroy you anyway.
Like language, myth exists to codify what feels larger than life—and yet in mortal hands, it falters. Lore reaches skyward, through the waves, but remains bound to the punishments of the sea and the tragedies of dry land, as the narrator, herself an outcast, discovers firsthand, a scientist to the uncanny.
A brilliant, melancholic book that encloses the heart like a cluster of barnacles or a swath of seaweed—even when the plot twist leaves it beating on the floor in a puddle. I was enveloped in its briny fog and never want to escape. I have been happily destroyed.
The exploration of the multiplicities within language, words, and etymology is not only thematic; it anchors the story in myriad interpretations that can exist simultaneously, slipping and defying expectations just as the narrator strains to transcend small town life, familial trauma, and, ultimately, herself. It’s archetypal, yes, but so deeply embodied that the characters’ aches become the reader’s own.
Essentially, the novel asks: What if your most tender, magical truth were treated as madness? And answers: It would still be true. But it might destroy you anyway.
Like language, myth exists to codify what feels larger than life—and yet in mortal hands, it falters. Lore reaches skyward, through the waves, but remains bound to the punishments of the sea and the tragedies of dry land, as the narrator, herself an outcast, discovers firsthand, a scientist to the uncanny.
A brilliant, melancholic book that encloses the heart like a cluster of barnacles or a swath of seaweed—even when the plot twist leaves it beating on the floor in a puddle. I was enveloped in its briny fog and never want to escape. I have been happily destroyed.