Chlorine: A Novel

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This book follows the classic horror structure of the main character going through a lot of horrible/miserable events as rising actions, thus leading the character to the climax of some sort of breaking point. In horror, the climax is usually the main character killing everyone. In drama, the climax would be a suicide. otherwise it tended more toward melodrama and hit-you-over-the-head themes and arguments. here's an example, when our protagonist has recently sustained a head injury and is conspicuously refusing to answer her doctor's very normal question (how's the pain):

An aching siren song, one that points us towards those uncharted dimensions of desire and identity that swim and shimmer, in and out of being." Ren aches to be in the water. She dreams of the scent of chlorine—the feel of it on her skin. And she will do anything she can to make a life for herself where she can be free. No matter the pain. No matter what anyone else thinks. No matter how much blood she has to spill. Ren, being an immigrant’s daughter with a father that lives in a different continent, is shaped to become the person everyone influential in her life expected her to be. Though Ren herself doesn’t know who she wants to become; her identity is put on the shelf multiple times as she is put under enormous pressure. Song writes Ren’s story with masterful skill pushing Ren slowly to the edge with incredibly engaging prose. The slow ascent to unhinged madness as Ren is whipped to reality by the disappointments of her coach, peers, and family; pushes her to embrace the identity formed by her delusions. In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian , Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies… a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming. or let’s try: “I’m confined to a comprehension of human difficulties through an American lens, no matter how hard I try to break out of the star-spangled brainwashing I was subject to from a young girl’s age.”

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Fierce... so vivi d... both b eautif ul and frightening. Chlorine isn’t just a coming of age story. It’s the tale of transformation from human to something wilder and more transcendent. It’s about lov e and longing and the willingness to do anything to become who you truly are."

We mutilated our hair, cultivating our arm leg pit vagina hair for months like farmers growing wheat, until we cropped it off i We mutilated our hair, cultivating our arm leg pit vagina hair for months like farmers growing wheat, until we cropped it off in one hour, together at the shaving party before the big meet.

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Like the scent of chlorine on one’s skin, this not-to-be-missed debut novel lingers.” — Library Journal (starred review)