‘Chlorine’ Review: Forget What You Know About Mermaids

“Forget what you know about mermaids,” Jade Song writes in the opening page of her debut novel, “Chlorine.” The following 200 pages of this slim book live up to this first-page intrigue. While “Chlorine” centers around a mermaid who narrates its story, the novel is far from a fairytale or Disney movie — it’s a brilliantly unsettling exploration of toxic competition, unhealthy power dynamics, and all of the messy grotesqueries of teenage girlhood.

“Chlorine” follows Ren Yu, a competitive high school swimmer, who pushes her body to the limits every day in pursuit of an athletic scholarship. Ren must simultaneously navigate puberty, adolescent sexuality, and a complex relationship with her Chinese immigrant mother. In a fantastical twist, the mermaid fairytales from Ren’s childhood begin to infuse into her present thought, pulling her toward the freedom of their underwater lives.

It’s no spoiler that Ren turns into a mermaid. In fact, the novel is narrated by Ren’s adult self, who quickly establishes that she now lives underwater as a mermaid. “You are not here of your own free will,” she narrates in the first chapter, addressing the reader directly. “You are here because I desired you first.”

From the beginning, Ren singles out the reader as something other — a citizen of the world, and a subject of blame — while telling her story from the protected distance of time. The effect allows for a sharp nostalgia to permeate the entire novel, balancing Ren’s affection toward her younger self with an adult anger at how the human world treated her.

Ren’s voice takes some time to get used to, but once the reader relaxes into the novel’s cadence, her narration adds an important, subtle layer to the story of Ren’s girlhood and eventual transformation. The plot, too, takes time to settle into. The first half of the book is more or less plotless, as the reader follows Ren throughout the various stages of her teenage life in an almost episodic way, patiently waiting for the mermaid transformation they’ve been promised. Although this promise falters occasionally as a driving force for the narrative, it pays off in the book’s latter half: Ren’s carefully planned school year devolves into athletic failures, psychological spirals, and eventually a horrific act of bodily violence.

This is not a book for the squeamish. Prior to the novel’s beginning, Song uses the author’s note to address several content warnings such as self-harm, eating disorders, sexual violence, and various forms of bigotry. “Chlorine” expertly weaves together ordinary adolescent milestones with uncomfortable, violent imagery. For instance, Ren’s first period is described as “burst water balloons” that leave “skid marks evoking roadkill” on her underwear. “Was womanhood always so violent, raw?” she wonders. Song uses the book’s gory nature to defamiliarize what society has deemed ordinary with the reality of what a teenage girl may find frightening and foreign.

Just as a mermaid is neither fully human nor fully fish, “Chlorine” also skillfully explores the spaces that exist between. Song’s characters exist at the midpoint between childhood and adulthood. Ren bridges cultures between her Chinese heritage — including an absent father living in China — and her life in the United States. Her relationship with her teammate Cathy also walks a fine line between friendship and sapphic romance, a mutual longing that both hesitate to act on. Even the swimming pool exists in a sort of liminal space — Ren describes her mermaid self as “not of salt like the mermaids in the book, but of chlorine.”

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.

Despite the novel’s speculative elements, Song is more interested in exploring Ren’s relationships with the people in her human life — Cathy, her mother, her boyfriend, and her coach — than in the concept of mermaids itself. This lack of clear classification works in its favor: In the absence of literary or speculative conventions, “Chlorine” can exist simply as a well-crafted story.

“Chlorine” does suffer from a few minor imperfections. The narrative is occasionally interrupted by Cathy’s letters to Ren, written after the mermaid transformation. These letters feel rather extraneous and seem to exist mostly to convey exposition. The novel’s surrealism is also unevenly applied — long stretches of the book are written in a fully realistic way, while the ending dissolves into complete fantasy. The moments that blur reality in the book’s last 50 pages are the best parts of the novel, and the book could have benefitted from showcasing more of these moments, and earlier.

Overall, “Chlorine” is an exceptionally strong debut. It’s shocking and tender, fantastical and intimate, gorgeous and grotesque. After reading “Chlorine,” readers will not only forget everything they know about mermaids — they may never look at a mermaid the same way again.

—Staff writer Samantha H. Chung can be reached at samantha.chung@thecrimson.com.