A haunting and beautiful novel that’s very well executed, especially for a debut. There’s a creeping horror on the surface veiling meditative depths of love, change and grief, in which the novel’s structure expertly reflects the parallel descent into the sea and into destruction.

What I like about this story is that you can choose your preferred level of metaphorical interpretation, whether you’ll emphasize the horror (the deep sea and the metamorphosis), the psychology (isolation and trust issues), the human relationships (growing distant, loss of a loved one), or something else entirely. What exactly is being destroyed? The body, the psyche, the bond? Writing this, I feel sure that these are only examples and that several other analytical paths can be taken through this story, and it would sure be interesting to deep dive (pun intended) into them!

I also found the exploration of grief in the lack of finality to be interesting and eye-opening. It made me think of how hope is usually seen as a human’s source of remarkable endurance and strength, but this showed how it could also be a weakness by disrupting a necessary grieving process, hence preventing closure. A double-edged sword.

As a short mention, Miri was an intriguing character even independently of the story. Sexual anxiety and hypochondriasis is something I haven’t seen in a lot of in other fiction I’ve read.

All in all, very good book that I’d love to read again sometime.