Chlorine: A Novel

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and the endless emotional anxieties associated with trying to measure up to ridiculously high standards. The book itself is also a sort of literary mermaid, existing comfortably between genres and age classifications. “Chlorine” is an adult novel with a teenage protagonist, though narrated by an adult. It juxtaposes modern slang in dialogue against vivid, elaborate prose. The book has elements of horror and is ambiguously fantastical — readers are never quite able to trust Ren’s unreliable assertion about being a mermaid.

While Chlorine is an ode to the various mermaids Ren saw herself in, my personal interpretation of the mermaids were as a symbol of perfection, but also as a symbol of breaking free. Perfection because as long as Ren was human, and swam in chlorine infested waters she could never reach her true ‘goal’. But as a mermaid she could achieve so much and more. I’m very thankful to Cristina Bacchilega and Marie Alohalani Brown for their book The Penguin Book of Mermaids ! I loved the story of the Chinese mermaid whose body was covered with fine hair of many beautiful colors—I like to imagine it’s the mermaid version of rainbow armor.Major themes which Song explores are identity, peer pressure and how culture plays a significant part. For example Ren idolises Faye Wong, her and her mother’s favourite Hong Kong musician and actress, yet her swim team friends like Bon Jovi and Journey, therefore Ren’s passions are lost on them. In the midst of hormones and trying to fit in, Ren’s life is filled with a lot of toxic damaging experiences. Yet there is some light, in the form of a red haired girl called Cathy. Their blossoming friendship and their sapphic longing is raw and turbulent, but holds such sweet moments. Though even Cathy cannot hold the darkness at bay and as the pressures rise from her swimming coach and from her mother, when she cannot meet their expectations and ultimately begins to fail, we see the toll it takes on Ren’s mental health. The way Ren copes with life, the way she’s always coped really, is to only visualise succeeding in her studies and swimming meets as ‘human’ tasks which will eventually fulfil her goal to becoming a true body of the water. I can understand why Ren would dislike men later in the book, because they creep on her. But at this point, men haven’t done anything at all to her. There is no narrative reason for Ren to feel this way, so I have to assume this is how the author feels.

In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian, Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies... a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming. Ren is 12 in this scene. Where did she get this idea that she needs to please men? I certainly didn’t have this need to please men at the age of 12. I guess the author just assumes that every little girl is beaten down by evil men all their lives, and they’re taught to obey and please men, because that’s all women are good for to men. Like wtf. In the vein of The Pisces and The Vegetarian , Chlorine is a debut novel that blurs the line between a literary coming-of-age narrative and a dark unsettling horror tale, told from an adult perspective on the trials and tribulations of growing up in a society that puts pressure on young women and their bodies… a powerful, relevant novel of immigration, sapphic longing, and fierce, defiant becoming. But these are human concerns. These are the concerns of those confined to land, those with legs. Ren grew up on stories of creatures of the deep, of the oceans and the rivers. Ones that called sailors to their doom. Ones that dragged them down and drowned them. Ones that feasted on their flesh. Ones of the creature that she’s always longed to become: mermaid.

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Ren’s delusion that she is a mermaid might(?) be because of her concussion, and her brain damage progressively getting worse because she didn’t treat it correctly, but it’s never fleshed out. When Ren first gets the concussion, she sees a mermaid tail in the stars. She also sees everyone in the hospital as fish people. This never comes up again. Several years later, she has a mental break where she thinks she’s a mermaid, but it’s not portrayed as the concussion caused some sort of damage that progressively got worse. All the concussion does is give her chronic headaches. So why was she hallucinating fish people in the hospital? What was the point of that? Chlorine by Jade Song is a coming of age, body horror debut which is as unnerving as it is poignantly tender. This is a thought-provoking, powerfully written novel which sent shivers down my spine. Turning the possibility of pure empowerment on its head, Song forces us to question Ren’s reliability as a narrator at the same time as she provocatively suggests that the truth is perhaps, irrelevant. What’s more important is that in Chlorine, Ren gets to write her own myth—what Fredric Jameson (by way of Claude Lévi-Strauss) once called “the imaginary resolution of a real contradiction”—that she can bridge the aporia of her life on her own terms. And what we’re left with is an aching siren song, one that points us towards those uncharted dimensions of desire and identity that swim and shimmer, in and out of being.