Words are important to Gretel, always have been. As a child, she lived on a canal boat with her mother, and together they invented a language that was just their own. She hasn't seen her mother since the age of sixteen, though - almost a lifetime ago - and those memories have faded. Now Gretel works as a lexicographer, updating dictionary entries, which suits her solitary nature.
A phone call from the hospital interrupts Gretel's isolation and throws up questions from long ago. She begins to remember the private vocabulary of her childhood. She remembers other things, too: the wild years spent on the river; the strange, lonely boy who came to stay on the boat one winter; and the creature in the water - a canal thief? - swimming upstream, getting ever closer. In the end there will be nothing for Gretel to do but go back.
Daisy Johnson's debut novel turns classical myth on its head and takes readers to a modern-day England unfamiliar to most. As daring as it is moving, Everything Under is a story of family and identity, of fate, language, love and belonging that leaves you unsettled and unstrung.
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[The places we are born come back]***
(Vintage Digital, 12 July 2018, 277 pages, ebook, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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If this is Johnson's debut I cannot wait to read what she comes up with next. I loved this book, absolutely adored it. I got completely lost in it and didn't want to come back. I loved the way the book is structured effortlessly moving between different narrative POV's and the past and present to create a beautiful and immersive story. I also loved the slightly darker tone the book takes as Gretel's memories of the past resurface. What really happened to the lonely boy? Why has Gretel not seen her mother for sixteen years? This book blew me away. I loved every word of it.
