“Man versus ocean. It's not a fair fight. It never was.”

This will probably be my Book of the Year. Maybe because this year, like protagonist Jay, I lost a parent who I didn’t always agree with. A parent who made me better against my will, an idea I didn’t understand or believe until it was too late to be thankful. Until I was in the belly of the whale, diving and diving and diving. Grief can feel like that, like squeezing waves, like peristalsis, like swallowing an obstruction, like being the obstruction.

Kraus expertly held my heart in his hand, stuck in his palm like a squid’s beak, and cradled me there until the very last word. Even from the very second the chapter header 3000psi dropped to 2974, my heart wrenched in my chest, sputtering, my oxygen matching his. This book is visceral, fleshy, palpable. Unrelenting, sorrowful, and brave. What is change but an ocean?

5/5 “Can a man really vanish down here? Bones and all? When before, that man was the whole bay, the mountains, everything?”

Don’t look at me, I’m still crying.