Everything Under: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2018 Paperback – February 7, 2019

A layered psychological portrait of the things we fear. The future, the present, the past; or more simply, the unknown. The story of a young runaway burning with fear and confusion, and the semi-feral mother and daughter who take them in, Everything Under is a dark fairytale of secrets and longings, escape and return, and the futility of running from that which we must face. Daisy Johnson’s prose is beautiful, but it is her ability to create and control atmosphere that really makes this book shine. For some the structure of this novel might take a little getting used to, as it alternates through three different timelines in its search for answers, but the pattern isn’t difficult to pick up on, and is very much worth it in the end.

Don't give up as the story twists and turns like the river it takes place on. There is so much to this book, really unique characters inspired by Greek tragedy and language that transports the reader. This is a tragedy in the classical sense and not a fast read, but for thinking and discussion, highly recommended!

Couldn’t stop reading it, but confusing to follow. Beautiful writing, but poor story teller, but I suppose the fragmented, tragic lives of characters is exactly how they felt.

Gretel, in Daisy Johnson's debut novel Everything Under, seems to live a very normal life. She's a lexicographer in her early 30s, living alone in a normal home in England. But her childhood was very different than you might expect: she and her mother, Sarah, were river people who lived on a houseboat. There was no school, so Sarah taught her out of encyclopedias and dictionaries while they moved around, constantly wary of a threatening presence they call "the bonak". Briefly, a young man called Marcus stayed with them, but he mysteriously vanished. When Gretel was sixteen, her mother abandoned her and never returned. Gretel has never stopped looking for her, and frequently calls local hospitals and morgues in case she's turned up somewhere. Then, one day, she gets a call that leads her to an area near where she grew up and the pieces of her past start coming together.We learn that she finds Sarah, and brings her home to care for her as something isn't right. And we also learn about Marcus, and what brought him into their world. The resulting story is a modern-day twist on the ancient Greek tragedy of Oedipus. It's difficult to share more about the book, both in an effort to avoid spoilers and because the book does not lend itself to being related straightforwardly. It's told from multiple perspectives, and across multiple timelines in a way that isn't always easy to understand.This book is a very impressive debut in some respects. Johnson's prose is confident and thematically rich. The atmosphere and imagery is lush and vivid. Water, its depths and the way those depths can hide things, runs throughout the book (yes, that pun is deliberate). So too does the theme of language, the importance of the act of naming. I loved that the thing Gretel and Sarah are trying to flee, the source of their dread is called "the bonak". It just sounds like something that goes bump in the night. And, like the play that inspired it, it spends a lot of time playing with the idea of fate. How much do we make our own choices, as compared to being helplessly buffeted by the winds of circumstances that surround us? There's a sequence in the book where a woman, touched with foresight, helps avert crisis situations...only to find that every bad thing she thought she prevented just came back around in the end, that's so poignant that it remained in my head long after I closed the book.As promising as the book might be, though, there are some major issues that kept me from being able to properly enjoy it. It manages to feel both overstuffed and underbaked in under 300 pages. The plot structure was often confusing, making it difficult to figure out what timeline the book is meant to be on, who is referring to who when they use pronouns. Though it was clearly meant to have the heightened drama of an ancient tragedy and not be strictly realistic, some of the decisions Johnson made for her characters were so jarringly odd that they didn't work. A few of the direct callbacks to the original Oedipus play, like the riddle book, felt shoehorned in, and it sometimes seemed like she was leaning both on our cultural knowledge of the play and her own evocative language to kind of "do the work" for her in a sense. I longed for an editor that could have shaped what is a powerful narrative by a gifted writer into something cohesive that really landed the big emotional punches it was swinging, but it missed as often as hit for me. This is a difficult book to read, featuring child abandonment and incest, and I would not recommend it for younger readers. Even for mature ones, though, it might prove unpleasant, and I found it off-putting enough that I can't affirmatively recommend it.

Her writing is wonderful and I will look forward to any of her books. The cover is beautiful. I loved this book.

Retelling of the stort Oedipus could be interesting. This one is not. Why is the "oracle" a transgendered person? Why is Oedipus sexually ambiguous? Why does the main narrator move between a dreamy belief in incarnated evil and her prosaic life? Who knows, who cares?

Despite being listed for several awards for 2018 (shortlisted for the Man Booker and a Shirley Jackson award nominee) this strange little experimental darling is one I haven’t heard much buzz for.A thoughtful, deconstructed, gender-fluid take on the Oedipus myth, Everything Under follows several different timelines to tell the story of Gretel, her mother, and Marcus. The plot is much too twisted to offer a concise summary but suffice to say that this is a book that it is better to take your time with.I was constantly in awe of the lush sentences even as I wasn’t always exactly clear what was going on. Reading Johnson’s prose was like trying to watch a movie from the bottom of a river, all the water, silt, fish, and debris flowing over top, obscuring and distorting the view. But at the same time, there is a strange compulsive magic to her writing that had me clinging to the page. This is a debut novel, everyone—be on the lookout for more to come from Johnson.I’m sure there is so much in this book that I missed, so many references and allusions, it really does call for a second reading.I personally wouldn’t have picked this one up if it hadn’t been on the list for the Shirley Jackson award—I love how diverse the books are for that award and I always find some good reads from it!

Stunning, like reading a gorgeous book of prose poetry. One of the best books I have ever read.

I am quite content with the packaging and the condition of the book. Coming to the quality of the book, I can use just one word: Phenomenal!

Johnson takes us into several worlds not visible but present: the world of undocumented people who've dropped out of contact into the territories of the homeless, of the make-do life along the British canals; of mental illness and resilient life; of the thoughts people think that are never expressed, and the actions of which they never speak.While the shape of the narrative is often obscure, the clarity with which the human relationships and actions over decades come together by the end has a terrible beauty.

Starts interesting but turns boring

Plico privo di contenuto.

A good story is a good story, and this one is. It’s outstanding uniqueness, though, is the engaging and quasi-mystical language in which the story is told. I keep reading, loving the good story and amazed by the language. When it confuses me I know the confusion is simply something I haven’t been told yet, so I keep reading. Then about halfway through, I started re-reading from the beginning, partly for pleasure and partly to pick up the clues I certainly had missed the first time. It worked well - nothing this good can be rushed. The landscape, the river, the changing light and seasons all enrobe the story like a dense fog. Johnson has amazing skill and sensitivity with language. What an enjoyable and rewarding book. By the way, the cover art deserves it’s own award!