Chlorine
4 stars
Chlorine is the tale[*] of Ren Yu, a Chinese American teenager who longs to become a mermaid and becomes obsessed with competitive swimming. It's told retrospectively from her perspective in the future after she has become a mermaid and has transcended human concerns. It's not quite a coming of age story, although it is about Ren being a teenager and growing up. It's also not quite a fantasy story, although there is a mermaid transformation. If anything, it feels like a dash of magical realism ambiguity over a large helping of body horror.
The tone of this book is a dispassionate look back from future mermaid Ren. This deadpan is wielded as a dissociative narrative device to describe awful events as matter of fact; Ren writes off pain ("mermaids relish pain"), creepy coach Jim touching her ("beautiful things demand touch"), and her father leaving to go back to China ("grudges …
Chlorine is the tale[*] of Ren Yu, a Chinese American teenager who longs to become a mermaid and becomes obsessed with competitive swimming. It's told retrospectively from her perspective in the future after she has become a mermaid and has transcended human concerns. It's not quite a coming of age story, although it is about Ren being a teenager and growing up. It's also not quite a fantasy story, although there is a mermaid transformation. If anything, it feels like a dash of magical realism ambiguity over a large helping of body horror.
The tone of this book is a dispassionate look back from future mermaid Ren. This deadpan is wielded as a dissociative narrative device to describe awful events as matter of fact; Ren writes off pain ("mermaids relish pain"), creepy coach Jim touching her ("beautiful things demand touch"), and her father leaving to go back to China ("grudges are for humans too small for forgiveness"). The distance between my emotional reactions to the events and the reactions and perceptions of Ren herself only made it cut deeper.
The others assumed I remained whatever they perceived of me before I ascended. But those were their impressions; their perceptions.
The strongest part of the book for me is the ambiguity of the last quarter of the book during the mermaid transformation, especially in the context of that tone. This part of the book describes parents and doctors and coaches disbelieving (perhaps along with the reader) and being horrified at her transformation, all the while the book is simultaneously being very clear that this is being narrated by a mermaid Ren, who brooks no doubt about what has happened to her.
"Please note these pages contain discussion and instances of racism, misogyny, self-harm, eating disorders, homophobia, depression, and sexual violence."
Just passing on these content warnings from the author's note, although I would also add emotional and physical abuse, creepy men (various), as well as general body horror.
[*] the book makes the obvious pun here at some point
