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Author: Caitlín Kiernan

Format: Digital

(Will try not to spoil the novel) The Drowning Girl follows India Morgan Phelps, aka Imp, a seemingly mid-20s lesbian woman with schizophrenia living in Providence, Rhode Island, as she writes her account of at least one odd supernatural encounter involving a woman named Eva Canning and a confused sequence of events that led to her girlfriend Abalyn leaving her. As she writes her account, you learn about her troubled mental health and her relationship with Abalyn while, partially in real-time, Imp tries to figure out what happened to her. The novel itself includes many metafictional elements - the text itself involves Imp talking to the reader and herself on a typewriter as she writes out her account of events and is further interspersed with a large number of extratextual references.

Importantly, the novel is set in New England babyyyyyy. It’s in Providence !! At some point, she mentions going to Worcester !!!! Additionally, the relationship between Imp and Abalyn (a trans woman) is very sweet, even though Abalyn is somewhat of a walking stereotype (lovingly) - she works as a video game reviewer and, notably, at one point, is explicitly seen playing Fallout: New Vegas (presumably for her job). In general, though, the depiction of Abalyn is extremely Normal and real (as to be expected [Caitlin Kiernan is transfem nb]) - a particular detail I found amusing was her mention of a chaser ex-boyfriend who fully funded her SRS and then realized he was, in fact, extremely a chaser and broke up with her amicably. It’s particularly nice to have a well-written transfem character in a novel who explicitly isn’t the mentally ill one.

I also especially enjoyed the extratextual references, which were in general written very well. Specifically, Imp makes a ton of references to fairy tales, which are crucial to the structure of the novel - the (one or two) encounter(s) she has are framed around the Little Mermaid and Red Riding Hood explicitly. Unlike many nominal ‘fairy tale retellings’ or adaptations of the sort, the fairy tales thematically are heavily tied into the main story and the struggles that Imp has.

Overall, I highly recommend the book, especially if you like horror or fairy tales or are a trans woman. It can get quite intense towards the end of the book, but in a way that kept me wanting to finish off the book as soon as I could.