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It was so tempting for me to list five or six stories today, but I did follow the rules by narrowing down my choices to books that have been published in the last five years that I think should have been far more popular than they were.
My answer for this week’s theme?
The Deep by Rivers Solomon. That link will take you to the Goodreads page for it, and this one will show you my review of it from 2020.
What is it about? Without giving away spoilers, it’s about black mermaids who bear little to no resemblance to Disney’s bubblegum representation of mermaids. Their meaning is much deeper and thought provoking than that.
What I love about this novella are all of the layers readers get to unwrap as they discover more information about Yetu and her people. My impression of her changed several times as I read this book, and I keep hoping someone will finally turn it into a film or TV show.
Other themes in the storyline include intergenerational trauma, the lingering effects of racism, figuring out how to heal from the past, accepting love (both romantic and platonic), and, interestingly enough, the many differences between aquatic and land-based organisms.
Obviously, humans in their current form cannot live in the ocean. It takes a lot of alterations to make such a thing possible and some of them created opportunities for amusing misunderstandings, so keep an eye out for those moments as they appear.
The world-building leaves a lot of space for readers to come up with our own ideas of how certain things worked or what happened in the time periods Yetu does not have knowledge of as well. This is yet another reason why we need more readers for this book and for an on-screen adaptation to happen.
I need more folks around who would like to discuss the possibilities of this world and what might happen next to the characters!
Ooh, Lydia, The Deep sound right up my street, thanks!
Awesome. I hope you love it.
Is it based on anything? I checked out mermaids on Wikipedia and the African entry is…a paragraph.
No, I don’t think so?! Or if it is it’s so obscure I haven’t been able to find anything about it.
I loved The Deep too, and plan to read it again sometime soon. Great choice.
Oh, awesome! Glad to hear it.
Sounds interesting…I’ve not read anything about mermaids since a niece wanted to be one, almost 20 years ago.
🙂
With all the prestige award it got nonionized for. then it must be good. I do like books with mermaids and wish there were more of them.
My WWBC: https://snapdragonalcoveblog.wordpress.com/2024/08/21/things-i-wish-more-people-would-talk-about/
It was excellent! I tried to leave a comment on your post, but I don’t think it went through.
What a great book! Thanks for highlighting it.
You’re welcome. 🙂