Obliquely riffing off myth, fantasy, and quest, the novel presents a tale which explores aspects of how we each deal with life. The novel explores relationships, motherhood, daughter-hood, parent-hood, aspects of gender, .... Although far from the relationship I had with my mother, which was a complex and difficult one on both sides, the journey I have made through this story has helped me to approach coming to terms with persistent hauntings.
The river, its disguised strength and its watery tanglings make such appropriate metaphors for the intricacies of relationships, not to mention how alien we feel to that environment. The use of words, names, and the thought that we cannot think about what we cannot name, is an intriguing aspect of the novel. I also of course felt closer too because of having been an editor myself, and for at time at OUP, and knew the dictionary department where the narrator works. There is also the losing of words, the desperation to tell, and the inability to find the descriptor which my mother suffered after her stroke, and which in a mild but irritating way I am increasingly finding myself with age.
We need fiction in order to differentiate it from fact. I believe that we all need to be able to create myths in order to look clearly at facts, to make sense of the world. I believe in having rooms in the mind, rooms with windows onto the other rooms - and progress through life adds to the rooms, and helps to sort them, constantly sorting, experiencing, thinking, and sorting.
Daisy Johnson's Everything under has tugged at my mind and given me enormous satisfaction.
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