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The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish
Audiobook10 hours

The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

About this audiobook

It's sixteen-year-old Edie who finds their mother Marianne dangling in the living room from an old jump rope, puddle of urine on the floor, barely alive. Upstairs, fourteen-year-old Mae had fallen into one of her trances, often a result of feeling too closely attuned to her mother's dark moods. After Marianne is unwillingly admitted to a mental hospital, Edie and Mae are forced to move from their childhood home in Louisiana to New York to live with their estranged father, Dennis, a former civil rights activist and literary figure on the other side of success. The girls, grieving and homesick, are at first wary of their father's affection, but soon Mae and Edie's close relationship begins to fall apart-Edie remains fiercely loyal to Marianne, convinced that Dennis is responsible for her mother's downfall, while Mae, suffocated by her striking resemblances to her mother, feels pulled toward their father. The girls move in increasingly opposing and destructive directions as they struggle to cope with outsized pain, and as the history of Dennis and Marianne's romantic past clicks into focus, the family fractures further.

Moving through a selection of first-person accounts and written with a sinister sense of humor, The Deeper The Water The Uglier The Fish powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they can't, and shouldn't, have to themselves.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 30, 2018
ISBN9781977334114
The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish

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Rating: 3.3513513243243245 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Here's an ugly story to match the title. A famed writer gets his start with his confessional novel about a much younger girl, the daughter of a dear friend, whom he seduces and marries. She is mentally ill, and as she attributes the cause to her husband, she banishes him from her life with her their two young daughters. Everything these two touch is infected by their toxicity - especially the daughters. With no other relatives, the girls are sent to NYC and reunited with their father, who uses the younger daughter to recreate his life with his underage wife for his writer's blocked overdue novel. Some decent writing, especially from the PoV of the elder daughter, but all the mildly happier-than-anticipated endings in the world can't save this. It reminded me of the novel Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, which won critical acclaim but was overflowing with characters to despise. I could go on but there's just nothing redeeming here.