The Drowning Girl

Emotional, Raw, Honest

Subtext is the word for this book. It took me longer to read than normal because of the emotional, raw nature of the story and because I felt the need to stop and consider what the meaning behind her words (and the very specific visuals) meant. There is a swirling (and often overwhelming) mix of reality vs fantasy, paintings and storytelling, mermaids and werewolves, pearls of truth hidden in lies, denial and awakening, friendship and love...and finally a very dark haunting. What struck me most is the devotion and friendship between the two outcasts and how their strengths and weaknesses balanced each other out through this strange fantasy/reality of wonderful IMP.

Kiernan has to be one of the most thoughtful, show more symbolic storytellers I've ever read. I guarantee you will expend emotional energy reading this story, but it's worth every single word. I will definitely be reading more of Kiernan's stories. show less

This is a dense book that rewards the reader who pays attention. There are many cultural and historical references that required me to do some research. I also found echoes of Gene Wolfe, (a personal favorite), in the style of the writing. Like Wolfe's Severian, India Morgan Phelps, (Imp for short), is an unreliable narrator. Unlike Severian, who peppers the Book of the New Sun narrative with reminders that he has a memory that forgets nothing, Imp regularly reminds us that her story cannot be trusted because she is crazy, confused, and a liar. Coupled with the density of legend and a meandering style of story-telling, Kiernan's tale makes for a difficult but immersive read. I see that many readers felt the ending was a cop-out. I, on show more the other hand, feel that this book is more about the journey than the destination and give it a solid 9 out of 10 rating. show less

‘La Joven Ahogada’, de la irlandesa Caitlín R. Kiernan, es una novela que puede encuadrarse dentro del gótico contemporáneo, es decir, que no nos vamos a encontrar castillos en ruinas y espacios lúgubres y misteriosos. Puede que lo más llamativo sea la inteligente estructura narrativa, que incluye recortes de periódicos, extractos de poemas, fragmentos de llamadas telefónicas, y algún cuento dentro de la propia novela escrito por su protagonista. Todo, hay que reconocerlo, bastante caótico, que en algunos momentos te llega a sacar de la historia. Pero también hay que tener en cuenta que la narradora es una esquizofrénica paranoide, y por ello poco fiable, que reproduce sus delirios en forma de relato novelado. La historia show more no hace más que avanzar y retroceder constantemente y no puedes confiar en absoluto en los recuerdos de la protagonista, como ella mismo llega a admitir.

La historia está protagonizada y narrada por Imp, una joven que vive en Providence (la tierra del Maestro Lovecraft; ¿casualidad?), cuya profesión a tiempo parcial es la pintura. Se trata de una chica con una fuerte personalidad, que te engancha enseguida. Padece esquizofrenia paranoide, enfermedad que hizo suicidarse a su madre y a su abuela, y que mantiene a raya mediante medicación y periódicas visitas a una psiquiatra. Hay que mencionar el cuadro del siglo XIX La Joven Ahogada, que ejerce una extraña fascinación sobre Imp. También tiene su importancia Abalyn, con la que mantendrá una relación. Pero la parte más interesante es la que tiene que ver con sus fantasmas, ya que esta es una historia de fantasmas, y una manera de exorcizar los extraños sucesos que le acaecieron en relación con Eva Canning, una misteriosa mujer de la que recordará dos encuentros con ella, pese a que parezca un solo encuentro. Eva Canning, cuyo parecido con la joven del cuadro es perturbador.

‘La Joven Ahogada’ resulta una novela interesante, fascinante en algunos momentos, y una lectura que no deja indiferente. show less

What if you were insane, but actually haunted by a real ghost? I'm not sure why nobody has ever really tried this before (Yellow Wallpaper doesn't count because it always calls the narrator's perceptions and mental stability into question).

Drenched in philosophy, history, psychology, science, and autobiography Kiernan uses her encyclopedic knowledge to weave a tale so dense it is sometimes difficulty to see where she is going but fascinating nevertheless. Imp seems to be the ultimate unreliable narrator, but is she? And there seems to be a narrator's narrator. The plot, such as it is, twists and turns, never proceeding linearly for very long. Kiernan, through her narrator, even comments on this fact. Real life rarely proceeds linearly. show more It only seems that way in retrospect due to what we choose to accept and discard in the telling/remembering.

History writing proceeds similarly since it almost always depends as much on what we discard or ignore in the telling as it does in what we conclude to accept. This is why we largely make the same mistakes over and over again even though the adage that "those who don't study history it are doomed to repeat" Study of history is almost useless as a prediction of the future because the distillation we make of history rarely resembles the plethora of currently known and unknown facts and "truths." The now almost never looks like the history we think we know. Otherwise, how can half the people think higher taxes are bad and half think they are good. One perspective must be "true" at this point in time but who knows for sure? Even when we are aware of the facts we accept and discard we cannot decide (if we are honest with ourselves), much less when we don't know, what we don't know.

And Imp cannot make any sense of the past even though she studies, reflects, and writes. She has no idea where she is going and her past is no guide because she cannot decide what to accept and what to discard. She's not even sure when she is sane (Is she? maybe she is hyper-sane) and even has trouble deciding whether what she is writing is fact or truth. The distinction is essential. Truth does not necessarily imply factual and a fact doesn't always imply truth. Now we are back to what to accept and what to discard and our own faulty senses and memories and thinking just muddles the situation more. Now add to that that the supernatural is real. Anyone would lose their sanity. show less

Instinctively, I keep looking for that sort of beginning, even though I know better. Even though I know full well I can only arrive at useless and essentially infinite regressions.

I am not remotely ready to review this, but I have to put something here to get this bloody*, beautiful mess out of my mind for a bit. So four things, I think.

1. Personal to Mr. Danielewski and Ms. Walton: THIS is how you write a spiral shaped narrative about a dead/dying/deified/alive/dreamed up woman cobbled together out of broken myths and songs and yes fictitious artworks That Sticks The Fucking Landing. Seriously, take notes!

2. I am a little baffled that I did not see [b:The Sea Came in at Midnight|861572|The Sea Came in at Midnight|Steve show more Erickson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1335555462l/861572._SY75_.jpg|1621053] or its author in the otherwise rather thorough acknowledgements. (Maybe I overlooked it. My eyes are crossing a bit, since I was up until 3 a.m. with this book.) In any case, Kiernan has to have read it. Two books cannot be this much in conversation unwittingly. And wow is it ever a fantastic conversation.

3. I am not sure this is any kind of fantastic genre, not even magical realism. (It may be magical realism, but I really don't think it is.) But Imp and her story are so big and so good that I don't care. And it is a ghost story, I don't deny that in the least.

4. Why have only like three people I know rated this book? This book is incredible.

Anyway, there it is. Because I may never be ready to review this book. But I will probably at least come back later to see if I can figure out how to link the Spotify playlist I am building for this beast.

*This book needs almost every content warning. See under spoiler tag for my best effort: It's got every kind of suicide. It's got artistic depictions of child death. It's got on screen hallucinations of bestiality and/or monster fucking. (The monster fucking may or may not be real.) It's got graphic on screen mental breakdown. It's got a touch of domestic violence. It has at least two dead queer people, but the survivors are also queer, so I'm not sure I need to warn for this? There are rape mentions that may be paranoia talking. It's got self harm and medication noncompliance. It's got an institutionalized character (prior to the main plot). It's got animal death. It's got transphobia, but condemned by the narrative. It's got corpse desecration. The murder and corpse of Elizabeth Short (Black Dahlia) are described in graphic detail, as are several other violent deaths. I'm absolutely positive I'm missing some things. If you need to know about a specific thing feel free to ask in the comments; I will do my best to answer. show less

Kiernan writes this story in first person, so the story in told in the manner of a sometimes medicated psychotic trying to process her world and her emotions. Kiernan in the manner is able to express her colorful imagination, her love of word play, also her disdain for linear storytelling and her passion for cribbing other writers. A wild ride, absorbing and moving.

Ghosts are those memories that are too strong to be forgotten for good, echoing across the years and refusing to be obliterated by time.

Reading The Drowning Girl was like racing across a cargo net.

You think you know unreliable narrators but you have no idea until you've read Imp's memoir. I mean, she has to be the queen of unreliable. Course that most likely has something to do with Imp being crazy. Her word, not mine. Medically speaking, Imp has schizophrenia, which she fesses up to right from the start. Yet there seems to be another layer even deeper, beyond the unreliability of Imp's mental status, something else in between me and the facts ... I'm not sure how to explain it, if that's even possible; I'm sure an explanation is show more besides the point.

That's another thing about ghosts, a very important thing--you have to be careful, because hauntings are contagious. Hauntings are memes, especially pernicious thought contagions, social contagions that need no viral or bacterial host and are transmitted in a thousand different ways. A book, a poem, a song, a bedtime story, a grandmother's suicide...a diagnosis of schizophrenia...a story you tell your daughter (p.12).

I loved how art, fairy tales, myths and legends were explored, especially from the "truth" versus "fact" perspective.

Finally, I sincerely appreciated the relationship between Imp and Abalyn because I so rarely come across a transgender character who reads like, you know, a real person instead of a lesson in political correctness or an author trying to score diversity points for their "look at me, I'm a [fill-in-the-blank] character." So Abalyn was refreshing.

Only recommended to readers who do NOT mind never knowing what "really" happened.

4 stars (and I can't wait to read The Red Tree in the near future)

There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there's always a siren. It may be with us all our lives, or it may be many years or decades before we find it or it finds us (p.101). show less