A man claims he can breathe underwater and vanishes with his son
At Sea — Emma Fedor
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At Sea by Emma Fedor
Content warnings, which include some spoilers, included in the footnote of this newsletter.1
What It’s About
I’m going to start with the vibes of this book to get you in the right headspace: muggy, hazy, mist-filled late-summer days, empty piers in tourist beach towns at the end of the summer season, a light in the distance you can barely see through the thick dusk air.
Okay, the scene is set — let’s discuss the book. Cara meets Brendan while she’s out sketching sea images. He’s in the water, and he bets her a date: if he can stay underwater for ten minutes without coming up, she has to go on a date with him. When he does, she’s shocked.
Over time, he confesses his past in the military, his PTSD, and that he was used in covert military operations. Namely, a human experiment to add gills to a person to allow them to breathe underwater. Cara doesn’t know what to believe. On the one hand, Brendan seems to be adamant this really happened, showing her scars on his sides where his gills are and proving time and time again that he can spend exorbitant amounts of time underwater. But, surely that can’t be possible, and the military wouldn’t do this . . . would they?
Brendan and Cara soon have a son, and Cara believes this is her happy-ever-after. But baby Micah is ill, colicky, and crying all the time. Brendan is lashing out with wilder stories and more violence than ever. And Cara just wants to keep her child safe. When Brendan takes Micah and vanishes for good, Cara’s world is shattered.
But five years later, when Cara is still grappling with her grief from losing her child, a local fisherman claims to have spotted a man and a young boy in the open water. Her hope rekindles: Could Brendan and her son still be out there, and could they really be living at sea? Or is it — and was her whole relationship — a figment of her or Brendan’s imagination? What is real and what is not? Will Cara ever be able to tell?
Why You Should Read It
There’s a lot going on in this book, too much to succinctly explain in a summary. So if you felt confused, don’t worry: you’re supposed to. This is a hazy, misty book of a toxic but deeply felt and infatuating love and why people might stay in an abusive or harmful relationship when those outside may not understand. To be clear, it does not romanticize this type of relationship at all. Rather, it provides a nuanced look at how difficult navigating this situation can be, especially for those with young children.
Cara’s confusion surrounding Brendan’s personality, his outbursts, and his outlandish stories of his time in the military add to the unreliability of both his and her story. I won’t say much more because it’s best to let the story unfold as it’s presented.
Honestly it’s difficult to put into words how I felt about this book, and it’s difficult to describe why I think you should read it. It’s a genre-bending, boundary-breaking book that asks questions about family, trauma, grief, and more, and will leave you with more questions than answers.
What is your book of the summer — the best book you read and one that you think everyone must read?
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CWs: references to and thoughts of suicidal ideation; pregnancy and discussion of abortion; PTSD and outbursts of fear and paranoia; familial history and in-depth discussion of mental illness and schizophrenia, along with a violent yelling scene (no physical harm); mention of a character murdering a woman and serving time in prison; endangerment and death of child; toxic relationships; death of mother (before book starts) and extensive discussion of grieving the loss of mother as character hits life’s milestones; gaslighting; use of R-word by drunken side character.