My friend Stacey told me about this book originally, I think. It is written by Julie Orringer, who is the sister of a good friend of Stacey's from high school, who I sort of knew at college. Or maybe Stacey had told me that Amy's sister had been published. Whatever it was, I knew that Amy's sister was a writer. I think I bought the collection she was published in and I think it is currently next to or possibly under my bed. Then I read Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree and he praised How To Breathe Underwater to the skies. And I thought to myself, oh my! I'm reading about my acquaintance's sister! How odd. I should get her book. So I did, and I'm completely entranced.
I read "The Isabel Fish" on the el yesterday afternoon. It's the story from where the title comes. It's about a girl who was in a car accident and almost drowned and where the driver of the car did drown. The girl is 14 and she's dealing with the death and how it affects her and her family. Halfway through my ride on the brown line, I realized that I had been more or less holding my breath the entire read. I felt like I was submerged in water reading it. I read an interview with Ms. Orringer online and she talks about how she felt that phrase:
She is coming off a rather awful incident with a car accident and a drowning and it seemed to me this phrase, this idea of trying to breathe under water was something that maybe had some larger resonance for the other stories as well. They tend to be about young women who are in between childhood and adulthood. They are about people who are at a moment of an incredibly difficult transition in their lives. It’s not just a coming-of-age transition – in fact, I am resistant to that idea of coming of age. It suggests two different states – one that you pass out of and one that you strictly enter. I feel like the title has something to do with how hard it is to redefine yourself after a loss or trauma or as you are entering this new period of your life. And yet we somehow do it anyway.
I do think that she encapsulates that very well. Thinking back through adolescence, it was a little like breathing underwater. Those middle school years are the worst. When you're changing, and everyone is changing, but at different paces and in different ways, and it is all horrible. All you want to do is to belong, but everything is a strict pecking order.
Comments