Chlorine

A Novel

No cover

Jade Song: Chlorine (2023, HarperCollins Publishers)

English language

Published March 25, 2023 by HarperCollins Publishers.

ISBN:
978-0-06-325762-7
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3 stars (8 reviews)

4 editions

reviewed Chlorine by Jade Song

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 …

Review of 'Chlorine' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

There’s a lot about this that would have worked for me. I love a story of obsession, and I thought I might get something like the movie The Novice here. I also love a horror/magical realism combo. But the writing style was TOO much. Overwrought, portentous. I wanted something with more bite and less melodrama. I also found myself second guessing how old the narrator starts as because I thought she was 7, but she spoke more like she was 12 or older… but no, she is supposed to be 7. So I was just getting frustrated!