Nataliya's Reviews > The Deep

“What is belonging?” we ask.
She says, “Where loneliness ends.”

It’s a captivating book, atmospheric and sensual and at times a bit overwhelming. I did not like it for quite a few pages, but then somehow, a third in or so, realized that it had me entranced despite the nagging mixed feelings and reservations and the fact that it took me three days (!) to finish this slim novella.

The premise is beautiful and sad — but yet strongly life-affirming. Wajinru are the descendants of the pregnant women thrown overboard from the slave ships. The mothers drowned, but their children while still in the womb were embraced by the ocean and learned to breathe water, and adapted to the waters of the deep, and were transformed into ocean creatures. From death and destruction came life.

“The deep will be our sibling, our parent, our relief from endless solitude. Down here, we are wrapped up. Down here, we can pretend the dark is the black embrace of another.“

Eventually they found each other, and formed a society, and learned of the horrors that led to the emergence of wajinru. The pain of the memories and the anger were such that decision was made for only one of them - the Historian - to hold all the Remembrances, while the rest could live up encumbered by the weight of History, only receiving the memories from the Historian once a year for a few days, to remind them who they are. But only a few days — any longer can lead to catastrophe as they would be trapped in memories of grief, unable to process them, unable to recover.

“One can only go for so long without asking who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after? Without answers, there is only a hole, a hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities.”

Once upon a time, one of the first wajinru met a “two-legs” woman, recognized the kinship and learned language, identity and love — but that love was lost. Later on, others have seen the cruelty of two-legs and the resultant anger was all-consuming.

Now the Historian is Yetu, who longs to be free from the weight of pain and death and grief in the memories that are her burden to carry. The memories are destroying her, mentally and physically. “With each passing year, she was less and less able to distinguish rememberings from the present.” Driven by the need to survive, she flees — and, hurt and trapped, meets Oori, a human who is the last of her people. And now, vulnerable and far away wajinru, Yetu begins to confront the issues of identity, of loneliness, of belonging.

“It still pleased her that she could do that, that it was possible to have her mind to herself. Without the History devouring the whole of her mind, she had an inkling of who she was. She didn’t have answers yet, but she had questions, endless questions. And worries, and concerns. But they were hers.”

The questions and thoughts that this story evokes are those eternal ones, that do not diminish with time or experience. What forms your identity? What makes you who you are? How much is your sense of self and identity tied to those who came before you? How much do you owe to your assessors? When should you leave the past and start anew? Can you justify one person’s sacrifice for the good of the greater whole?

“She wasn’t used to speaking so freely about her wants and needs. She wasn’t used to having wants and needs of her own at all. It had always been a battle between what the wajinru needed, what the ancestors needed, and what she needed. A single lonely girl, her own needs never won.”

So why the reservations and the mixed feelings then? There is not much plot, really. It’s more of introspective narration and musings interspersed with bits and snippets of memories and stories. It sags and stutters in places, veers into the melodramatic and sometimes overwrought. And the ending is just too easy.

And my personal jarring moment that completely took me out of the story - just one line, incongruent with the rest of the narration — the inner monologue line “Was such a thing passed down in DNA?”. Please, do not throw the reader out of the story by mentioning DNA, clearly not a wajinru concept, wajinru who refer to humans as “two-legs”. Minor, but irritating nevertheless. (Replace DNA with “blood” and it suddenly reads less jarring. Where were you, editors?)

So overall I give it 3.5 stars. I may round up eventually, if it still has me thinking about it in a few days.

“Forgetting was not the same as healing.”

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My Hugo and Nebula Awards Reading Project 2020: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...