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The chronology of water
334 pages
A raw, untraditional plunge into grief, fluid sexuality, and the fierce current of survival.
What it feels like
This is a fiercely untraditional memoir that plunges the reader directly into the turbulent waters of a life shaped by extreme grief and artistic emergence. The narrative moves with a propulsive, visceral energy, mirroring the narrator's lifelong connection to swimming as it navigates the messy, fluid realities of gender, bisexuality, and family violence. The prose itself is boundary-pushing, actively interrogating the nature of memory and life writing while pulling the reader through dark currents of addiction and self-destruction. Yet, the emotional undertow is ultimately one of profound resilience. It will deeply satisfy readers who crave raw, unflinching explorations of the body, the evolution of the artist, and the hard-won journey toward survival, love, and motherhood.
- Mood
- turbulent
- visceral
- grief-stricken
- ultimately hopeful
- Tone
- raw
- unflinching
- defiant
- introspective
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- navigating extreme grief · fluidity of sexuality · addiction and self-destruction · emergence of the artist · survival and motherhood
- The writing
- Boundary-pushing and fluid, the writing actively interrogates the traditional structure of memoir itself.
- The arc
- Plunges into the depths of extreme grief and self-destruction before surfacing into the hard-won survival of love and motherhood.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave fiercely honest, untraditional life writing that explores the messy intersections of trauma, sexuality, and art.
Content notes
- violence
- extreme grief
- addiction
- self-destruction
About the book
This is not your mother's memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman's developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.
Description from Open Library.
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