Hi everyone
The Deep was my first book by Rivers Solomon and I read this on my e-reader.
"Her people, the wajinru – water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slavers – live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one. Save the historian.
Yetu remembers for all the wajinru, and the memories – painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so she flees to the surface, escaping the memories and the expectations and the responsibilities – and discovers a world the wajinru left behind long ago.
Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past – and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identities – and own who they really are."
This was a strange read, and I’m not sure how I feel about this book.
The premise was very intriguing and totally made me want to read this. The idea of the wajinru and their collective memory is fascinating and haunting. Both this and the gorgeous cover sucked me in.
The Deep is not a plot-driven
novel. Instead, it focuses on character growth, memory, and
the weight of history and I really appreciated this storytelling. The back-and-forth structure felt right for the story.
However, the dense, flowery prose often felt
overwhelming rather than engrossing. I struggled to get through the
book, even though it’s only 170 pages. I found myself putting it down
frequently, not because I wasn’t interested, but because the writing
style made it hard to stay immersed. It felt as though Solomon was
trying too hard to write Great Literature. The pretentious and contrived
tone of the writing pulled me out of the story more often than it drew
me in.
The big questions; whether the good of one person is more important than the whole and who we really are apart from our ancestors, are still lingering in my mind.
So, in conclusion, The Deep left me with conflicted feelings. I found the premise intriguing, the story both painful and beautiful, and the message deeply thought-provoking but I disliked the forced, flowery writing.
Have you read The Deep? Did you love the writing, or did you struggle with it like I did? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Happy reading!
Helena
