Saltwater by Jessica Andrews

 In this way, we experience the novel much as we experience life, with the past pressing against our temples and with our identity inextricably linked to our former selves.

I don’t really know where to start with Saltwater - which could, in itself, perhaps be a nod to the narrative style it utilises. The convoluted, non-linear timeline allows this novel to sprawl both in a temporal sense and a geographical one, stretching across cities and decades. At first glance, this experimental narration format looks as if it will keep the reader at arm’s length, with the novel itself being split into four parts, being told in a fragmented style instead of the chapter headings you would expect to find. The format reminds me somewhat of reading Plath’s journals, in the sense that these blocks of text are saturated with the sort of introspection that causes your breath to catch ever so slightly at the back of your throat, the way structural integrity is momentarily rendered useless in the swathes of experience. The format of the book lends itself effortlessly to this coming-of-age story it is telling: we are constantly shifting from the unnamed narrator’s childhood to her University experience, then back again before being transported to modern day Donegal. In this way, we experience the novel much as we experience life, with the past pressing against our temples and with our identity inextricably linked to our former selves. 

Saltwater’s synopsis is basic - girl grows up in working-class Sunderland, moves to London to study literature then ends up untangling family roots on the Irish coastline. The plot itself is uneventful, but the poeticism of the prose transfixes you with the texture of memory. The imagery is sharp, almost bitter at points, with this visceral observation from Andrews that weaves the emotion of the story into your very bones. All of this makes the novel feel like a living, breathing thing.

The complexities of mother-daughter relationships is prevalent throughout, as is the dynamic and ever-changing nature of them. Nothing about this novel is static and it is this that allows you to become immersed in the evolution of the narrator and the book itself. Andrews somehow manages to indirectly articulate the very sinews of a daughter’s relationship with their mother, from infancy to adulthood, as well as the way it modulates and distorts - it is a generalisation but a deeply resonating one. Familial relations and their integral impact are explored with such authenticity and sense of sentiment that the presence of each character resounds in the narrative, the same way they do in the protagonist’s sense of self. 

Identity, and what it means to grapple with it, lies at the heart of Andrew’s debut, ‘I am constantly searching for something that I cannot articulate, uprooting and disappearing based on an abstract feeling in the pit of my belly.’