Saltwater: Winner of the Portico Prize

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I am so drawn to difficult things. I am always travelling far away from the people I love. I am constantly searching for something that I cannot articulate, uprooting and disappearing based on an abstract feeling in the pit of my belly. What if it was not the right thing to leave London? What if this is not the right way to live? Perhaps it is better to want tangible things, like bodies and objects. Everything I want is invisible. Do invisible things have worth?” The novel explores a lot of themes such as love and finding where you belong in the world, and how your experiences as a child will almost always influence the way you behave as an adult. But the most important thing that Saltwater explores and what I believe was always at the forefront of the story is the relationship between a mother and daughter. And I absolutely loved the depiction of this relationship. Lucy’s relationship and feelings towards her mother felt so raw and realistic and I really enjoyed reading about it. The way Lucy depicts her mother in this god like way really resonated with me because I see my mother in the exact same way. Throughout the whole book, and especially as a child, Lucy just wants to stay close to her mother and know her in every single way and I just related to that on so many levels, which is one of the main reasons I think I enjoyed the novel so much. One thing that I had a problem with though was that throughout the book, Lucy feels like something is missing in her life and that’s a feeling that is consistent and is mentioned throughout the book but then I feel like it wasn’t resolved all that much in the end. In the last few chapters, there’s some sort of resolution, but it just felt really rushed to me and that was the only thing about the book that took me out of the story and I would have liked to see more of an improvement on.

For me, the only way to write about bodies is in a fractured, fragmented way, because that’s my experience of inhabiting a body; it’s something quite dissonant. I also wanted to create a sense of life happening to you if you’re someone who doesn’t have a lot of power. It’s non-chronological to create a sense of how experiences are existing in linear time but also all at once within the psyche. I can highly recommend the audio narrator but on the other hand with a book like this you may want to have an actual book to be able to re-read passages. I am just another impossibility. Colourless. Unformed. You cannot imagine anything as fiercely small, as fiercely hungry as me. There is a splitting that has not happened yet. This is you before me. You are a daughter and not a mother. Not yet. And yet; there are invisible things drawing us close, even here. Fall into those molten afternoons, his hands all over your body. Spill towards me. Saltwater could be seen as a three generations of mother/daughter relationships, also a commentary on northern mentality and attitudes, it’s also a coming of age story, a search for identity. Lucy also recalls childhood memories of 90’s and early 00’s culture. I was a teenager in the 90’s and remember Oasis-mania and then in my mid 20’s as a music reviewer, I remember the power of Myspace and the new breed of indie bands. To a certain extent, Lucy’s past echoed mine. I am wet and glistening like a beetroot pulsing in soil' (yeah but is beetroot wet when it's in the earth? I'd be pretty worried if it pulsed...)Auntie Kitty rationed the hot water and made anyone who entered the house throw holy sand over their left shoulder, To Keep Away The Devil. Her husband was involved in the IRA and they housed members in their attic. In the springtime she marched around the garden with a pair of scissors, snipping the heads from any flowers that dared to bloom orange. This is a first person coming-of-age story of Lucy, who becomes curious at a young age at how “language might capture emotions.” There's the few words of grief as her loving but alcoholic father fails to return for months at a time. She marvels at the way two or three words from a boy might suddenly paralyze her with desire. Then there are the times when she experiences the inexpressible, when words are not enough, no matter how she reaches for them. A book of breathtaking beauty. Saltwater is a visionary novel with prose that gets deep under your skin. The short, sharp chapters thrum with life. Lucy is a memorable character, her journey one that is moving and totally compelling, telling a series of deep truths about the state of our divided nation. Andrews is a major new voice in contemporary British fiction." When I was a teenager, you would go out in your little dress and your high heels with no coat and loads of make-up. But my more middle class friends didn’t wear make-up and is that a betrayal if you start to mould yourself in this other way of dressing or pressing yourself? It can feel like a betrayal of the women you’ve left behind.”

Impressionistic recollections . . . coalesce into a characterization of a young woman taught by her mother’s example how to navigate a society ruled by men... [Lucy will] experience her life fully, and . . . to be present in the world she must allow its weight to dissipate.”Insgesamt ist es aber ein schönes, angenehm zu lesendes Buch, das in mir ein bestimmtes Gefühl in der Brust ausgelöst hat. Der Schreibstil ist sehr inspirierend, die Landschaften lösen in mir Kopfkino-Effekt aus. Ja, es wird nicht das gesamte Potenzial ausgeschöpft, aber für mich reicht es hier dennoch für eine kleine Leseempfehlung. And she is in London, in the pubs with a lot of these guys, all these bodies, but they are all forgettable, as the central body and soul in her life is her mother: Saltwater is an introspective story told in poetic prose and fragmented thoughts. It weaves together the story of Lucy, past and present. In coming of age, Lucy feels a bit out of place in her home, her city, her relationships and her body. Saltwater is millennial nostalgia. It is beautiful in its simplicity. It envelops you in a slow, quiet, honest story that takes your breath away. As you noticed I said segments and that’s how the book is divided ; small paragraphs, which work as little memory blasts, obviously the more one reads, the more a plot forms, This book comes lauded with acclaim about its freshness, voice and vision - but, you know, it's just that old, old story of a girl struggling to become an adult and to find her place in the world. There can still be mileage in this theme but this book hits all the predictable milestones : wayward bodies, boys, sex, struggling not to be objectified, pigeon-holed by class and accent, the push-pull of mother-daughter relationships, wanting to be separate and individual while wanting to belong.

I feel the mother-daughter relationship has the same intensity as a romantic relationship – a really heightened emotion. You get some friendships like that in which the emotions are so strong; you can love them and hate them. I wanted to explore this. Writing the book was good as it meant I could ask inquisitive questions – I asked my mum to write me an account of what it was like to have a baby with a disability. We were able to spend time with important questions. It’s about making sense of your position in the world. But once she gets there Lucy can’t help feeling that the big city isn’t for her, and once again she is striving, only this time it’s for the right words, the right clothes, the right foods. No matter what she tries she’s not right. Until she is. In that last year of her degree the city opens up to her, she is saying the right things, doing the right things. Until her parents visit for her graduation and events show her that her life has always been about pretending and now she’s lost all sense of who she is and what she’s supposed to be doing. I sent a couple of these select quotes to a friend who asked if the book was written by a random word generator. I thought that was so spot-on I told him I was going to steal that line for my review.) The west coast of Ireland is beautiful but I went there out of necessity; I wasn’t expecting to write about it. I guess it leaked in. I moved there from London, where I was feeling squeezed and shut out. I was nervous to go to Ireland but there was actual space to occupy – all those wild, empty beaches. Having time to think, read and write felt like such a freedom compared to how my life had been.My favourite ever is Eimear McBride – bodily writing is what I love to read as it speaks to me from a really deep place. People who write about theory in an accessible way – Maggie Nelson, Rebecca Solnit, Claudia Rankine. I love Adrienne Rich’s poetry. I experience the world in a visceral, bodily way... it’s partly linked to gender This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't the extent of Andrews' portrayal of Ireland, but there truly is nothing else there, despite Lucy spending long periods of her life in Donegal. Andrews writes beautiful, unusual descriptions, and short chapters give [Saltwater] a poetic sensibility . . . Andrews’ debut declares her one to watch.”