The murky forces in Everything Under confuse and intimidate us, the wide-eyed readers, just as they confuse and intimidate the characters. A boy who decides to grow up a woman has prescient gifts, which she uses until she forgets to. Another character wills a new gender for himself after a trauma, and a monster lives below the surface of the river, but can walk upright on dry land, and may want to kill. Many believe it is also intent on stealing.
Be prepared for a novel that will make you alert by jumping between thread and thread; it will also keep you waiting … and doubting … and craving answers right up to the end and beyond. This is an arresting novel, in the best sense of the word. You will stop, and sit up, and wonder how its debut author, Daisy Johnson, produced such a stunning and unconventional work right out of the box. It’s a dark delight.
Gretel grew up with her mother Sarah on a boat moored in a river. She is not educated in public schools until her mother abandons her when she’s a schoolgirl of 16. Gretel spends years trying to hunt her mother down, but when she finally finds her, after perhaps a further 16 years, her mother’s mind has deteriorated. Fiona, born a boy, witnesses several bulls being castrated, and chooses the female gender for herself. Eventually Fiona finds Margot (born Marcus) living with her adoptive parents. Loss, and quests to repair losses, dominate the plot here, but the plot holds a secondary place to the images and the fraught emotions. Instead, author Daisy Johnson looses tidal forces of terror, psychic ability, crypto-language, and accidental death to power her narrative along.
Adult Gretel recalls episodes from her early teens, in which she imagines she’s keeping her younger self company, observing her mother through a roof portal on the boat. At these times, she imagines the bogeyman, the (physical?) distillation of all of her and her mother’s fears. This creature, legend has it, can breathe underwater and walk on land; is pale white and nearly hairless, is longer than a man is tall, has short, stubby legs, and steals things. Including children.
As the book proceeds, we catch apparent glimpses of this monster from time to time, coming and going in its not-quite-visible way, in the time it takes to gasp. Characters, particularly Sarah, refer to it and warn other characters to beware. At last, however, the monster of the rivers apparently shows itself clearly enough for Sarah and Gretel to give honest, physical chase.
The novel exhibits a strong sensual undertone. Genders are bent and malleated rather often as we go. Sarah discovers the truth about Marcus/Margot’s body in a flash of image and sexual activity that finishes abruptly in a gloss, like the wake of a moving boat. In fact, much of the narrative has an ethereal, out-of-focus quality, exactly appropriate to the subject.
The narrative fits into a present-day framework in which mother Sarah and daughter Gretel (whom Sarah sometimes refers playfully calls Hansel) are reunited in a tense, unloving standoff. And once the monster is tracked and dealt with, Sarah’s reason for living expires.
Gloomy and atmospheric, with its hauntingly raw emotional palette, Everything Under is a stunning debut which takes the reader outside herself, and deposits her squarely in the middle of its minefield. A challenging, haunting read, a raker-up of our darker moods, and yet a rewarding read nonetheless. Definitely a piece of provoke one’s mind and heart, and compliments to fiction rarely come higher than that.
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