Chlorine: A Novel

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sure, become a mermaid because of the weight of bigotry in the world...but do you have to be SO DRAMATIC about it. Part body horror, part science fiction, part queer teenage romance, Song’s debut novel dives into the deep end of bodily and psychological metamorphosis—but it’s not for the faint of heart. GO GO GO JIAO YOU JIAO YOU JIAO YOU ADD OIL ADD OIL ADD OIL" this is not a complaint i actually think it's very funny the translation is included bc no other pinyin (afaict) is translated throughout. spread that culture. EDIT: my friend pointed out to my extremely sleep-deprived brain that the correct pinyin is "JIA YOU" (from the other available pinyin, the text does seem to use standard mandarin) and at first i thought i'd made a typo but actually it says "JIAO YOU" in the text. so actually now i do have a problem which is echoing my earlier point Who At HarperCollins Copyedited This I didn’t enjoy the writing. I didn’t enjoy the story. There’s not much about this book that I particularly enjoy at all. I do like the author though. Jade Song (she/they) has a nice social media presence, they seem cool and maybe with more maturity, I’ll read a better book by them. I like their love of Wong Kar-Wai and Leslie Cheung films because same.

even a little inspiration from a group of pot-smoking skinny dipping non-goal-oriented kids, enlightened sparks of rebellious possibilities)…. Ms. Song is good on the growing pains of young adulthood…[This is] a book that enlivens its coming-of-age yarn with a touch of mystery and a twist of myth.” — The Economisti cannot stand being talked down to as a reader, especially for themes as simple as "bigotry abounds." Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine – the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill. Ren Yu is a swimmer. Her daily life starts and ends with the pool. Her teammates are her only friends. Her coach, her guiding light. If she swims well enough, she will be scouted, get a scholarship, go to a good school. Her parents will love her. Her coach will be kind to her. She will have a good life.

Chlorineis not for the faint of heart. Fierce and visceral, it seethes with rage and pain and the urgency of transformation. There are no pretty mermaids wearing seashell bras here, but readers open to sinking into darker waters will be captivated." While an accurate cover text for a book is a success for the writer of that description and undoubtedly fulfills its purpose, I have to admit that a cover description which is accurate to a fault gives away pretty much all the book is about, that can dampen the final opinion even though all expectations are met, but there has been nothing more than what the description gives. That is the case for me with Jade Song's Chlorine. I wanted to be honest about how difficult it can be to grow up. To simply exist when your body and your desires and your self rebels against rigid expectations. So it was less about representation, and more just about honesty. Books mirror truth—and that is why we love art. Most of the settings are Ren's life as a competitive swimmer. It's a story about mutilation as liberation. Mutilation as self preservation. Because it of Ren's painful but necessary metamorphosis, I read her journey as a trans metaphor, too. many people i know are very excited for this book, and i went into it with high expectations and was so sorely disappointed. i'll probably lengthen this review and actually approach my thoughts on the plot (which are a bit less complicated/perplexed than my thoughts on the language) when more folks i talk about books with have read it. i will just include a few snippets that demonstrate how clunky and poorly edited i think the prose is:

The final result of this is that Ren does earn her tail, but not by any supernatural force. Instead, she sews her legs together in a climactic scene that is Song’s writing at its most revulsive and sumptuous. Crucially, this moment is described not merely as a visceral account of physical extremity, but as a prolonged, psychically sublime process that forces us to consider how freedom and punishment are perhaps inextricable. How what we want to believe will unfetter us might never be totally distinct from the violent forces of the world; but is tainted too, and therefore has a shredded, carnal beauty. How was I supposed to differentiate between the pain due to the concussion and the pain due to the agony of everyday human life?" That said, I’m not sure it’s even supposed to be “real,” because, in my opinion, Ren’s story reads as mentally ill daughter of immigrant parents displays side effects of being a mentally ill daughter of immigrant parents. If mermaids are supposed to be real, more attention should have been given to developing that than Ren’s life as a contemporary high school human.

Chlorine is about a competitive swimmer named Ren Yu, who is driven to extremes by the pressures of living up to her family’s expectations, her coach’s demands, and the envy of her peers until she decides that to achieve her dreams she must become a mermaid, by any means necessary, no matter the blood she’ll spill, or the cost she’ll pay. It features codependent friendship, menstruation pains, shaving parties, and queer transcendence, with a side of body horror, which is personally my favorite genre, because nothing is more horrible than having a body! In addition, Chlorine pays homage to Faye Wong and Wong Kar-wai, weaving in the film Chungking Express throughout the plot. Prior to reading it I did not know anything about Chlorine. The synopsis on Goodreads only offered minimum information about the book. Chlorine is pitched as The Pisces and Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, two books that I have never read before, so I can’t really explain the similarities or any other details that I could compare to these books. For this reason, I will review Chlorine with a fresh and clean perspective.i loved the idea of this book so much (satirical ish literary horror about a swimming star who chooses to become a mermaid because of the weight of misogyny and homophobia and racism), but the execution...not so much! There’s a weird.. somewhat pedophilic relationship between Ren and her swim coach. Ren’s swim coach makes inappropriate comments towards Ren about her body. That's obviously gross, but, why is it here? The main catalyst for Ren having a mental breakdown is that Jim is overbearing, over trains, and is a strict couch who is emotionally abusive (he throws stuff at his students in anger). The potentially pedo-ish stuff actually doesn’t seem to have that much of an impact. ARC provided by Kelly at William Morrow in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy! All quotes used are taken from an early ARC and are subject to change upon publication. Ren’s delusion that she is a mermaid might(?) be because of her concussion, and her brain damage progressively getting worse because she didn’t treat it correctly, but it’s never fleshed out. When Ren first gets the concussion, she sees a mermaid tail in the stars. She also sees everyone in the hospital as fish people. This never comes up again. Several years later, she has a mental break where she thinks she’s a mermaid, but it’s not portrayed as the concussion caused some sort of damage that progressively got worse. All the concussion does is give her chronic headaches. So why was she hallucinating fish people in the hospital? What was the point of that? Ess owned a body more a vehicle for their own pleasure rather than a body carrying scars on its surface." there must be at least 5 more concise ways to express this sentence

We mutilated our hair, cultivating our arm leg pit vagina hair for months like farmers growing wheat, until we cropped it off i A strikingly original coming-of-age story . . . Full of contradictions, magnificently balancing and remarkably sustaining wonder with dread and magical realism with harsh reality, with a heartbreakingly beautiful and intensely uneasy tone, this is a story that will hold readers in its thrall. [A] great choice for fans of weird, immersive, female-driven body horror by authors like Julia Armfield, Cassandra Khaw, and Carmen Maria Machado’– Booklist starred review

Major themes which Song explores are identity, peer pressure and how culture plays a significant part. For example Ren idolises Faye Wong, her and her mother’s favourite Hong Kong musician and actress, yet her swim team friends like Bon Jovi and Journey, therefore Ren’s passions are lost on them. In the midst of hormones and trying to fit in, Ren’s life is filled with a lot of toxic damaging experiences. Yet there is some light, in the form of a red haired girl called Cathy. Their blossoming friendship and their sapphic longing is raw and turbulent, but holds such sweet moments. Though even Cathy cannot hold the darkness at bay and as the pressures rise from her swimming coach and from her mother, when she cannot meet their expectations and ultimately begins to fail, we see the toll it takes on Ren’s mental health. The way Ren copes with life, the way she’s always coped really, is to only visualise succeeding in her studies and swimming meets as ‘human’ tasks which will eventually fulfil her goal to becoming a true body of the water. And then there are descriptions of how one of them masturbated to the thought of the other and moaned their name. Like I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for this. Ok, this is just for fun and is one of our favourite questions here on the Fantasy Hive: which fantastical or mythical creature would you ride into battle and why?