“On the day of my first period, I was more dead doe than human woman. Was womanhood always so violent, raw?”

Plot Summary

Ren Yu is a teenage athlete, one of the stars of her school’s swim team. Swimming is everything to her: her escape from the banality of day-to-day life, her meal ticket to a more promising future, and the very thing that causes the people in her life to care about her. Her teammates rely on her, her mother pushes her to excel both in the pool and in the classroom, and her coach is laser focused on ensuring Ren is scouted by college recruiters. Along with handling the pressure of performing well as a student and swimmer, Ren is also facing the typical struggles of any teenager: puberty, friendships, and self-esteem issues. However, most of these issues are concerns that only trouble humans. Mermaids, on the other hand, don’t need to deal with periods or test scores. They are powerful creatures who are completely free from any societal expectations. Ren Yu spends her days in the chlorinated pool, dreaming of the day she’ll be able to leave this dismal human existence behind and begin living her true authentic life as a mermaid. As the pressure from her coach, her family, and her friends begins to rise, Ren begins to take the final steps towards reaching the metamorphosis of her dreams. No amount of blood or judgment will keep her from becoming her true mermaid self.

My Thoughts

If I hadn’t already shared my “Top Horror Books of 2023” post by the time I read Chlorine, I assure you that this book would have been on that list. This book captivated me from the very beginning and refused to let go until I turned the final page. Ren’s story is a very strange and heartbreaking one of self-discovery and yearning to live the life we dream of.

Chlorine is an oddly beautiful coming-of-age story that explores both the physical and metaphorical horrors of becoming a woman. In a similar vein to Carrie by Stephen King, we watch our protagonist struggle to come to terms with her changing body upon experiencing her first menstrual cycle; she experiences not only the physical pain of menstrual cramps and fatigue, but she also is faced with the concept of shedding her youth and inching closer to adulthood by this unstoppable biological event. Throughout the book, she also deals with other issues. She has a friendship with Cathy, a swim teammate, that sometimes toes the line of homoerotic obsession. Cathy becomes one of Ren’s closest confidants, and while it’s implied that Cathy develops feelings for Ren, it is unclear if Ren returns those feelings, or if she is even aware of them at all. At a party, Ren is assaulted by a teammate; she understandably spirals in the aftermath, unsure if she either caused or deserved the violence that was inflicted upon her. Like some adolescents, Ren has a difficult time relating to and fitting in with her peers. She is from a Chinese American family (which recently imploded upon her father’s return to China), and she often faces xenophobic comments and disrespect of her culture from her peers. On top of ALL of the hardships I just mentioned, Ren also thinks that she’s not even human. Not only does she feel different from the people around her due to her cultural background, but she also quite literally believes she is a mythical being. She feels as though the people in her life cannot understand what she’s going through, because they’re humans who are ignorant of the mermaid experience. She feels completely isolated and alien from the world around her, leading her to begin making the drastic changes needed in order to finally escape this human world and to live freely as a mermaid.

There is so much in Chlorine to unpack in regard to the concepts of identity and belonging. I felt as though this was a very creative way to explore the pressure put on adolescents to fit in and assimilate. This book was incredibly heartbreaking at times; though Ren’s wish to become a mermaid can sound far-fetched, her raw longing for this new reality really punches you right in the gut. Her loneliness and isolation are suffocating at times. Realistically, you know that she cannot attain the life she dreams of, but at the same time you know that this is the only way she can truly be happy. Chlorine really captures how people can deteriorate when forced to mask themselves in order to keep up appearances. I’m not sure if this was the author’s intent, but I connected a lot of Ren’s experience to that of transgender individuals who are unable to live as their authentic selves for whatever reason, whether that be unaccepting family members or lack of resources. I feel as though there is definitely an allegory to be made here about transgender individuals having to hide their true selves in order to either appease the people in their lives or because they simply cannot access the means necessary to help them transition. I may be overthinking that connection a bit, but either way, the thought of yearning to simply live as your true self is so incredibly heartbreaking.

This book also does feature some pretty gnarly body horror. Now, I’m a veteran when it comes to body horror, but there were some sequences in this book that had me squirming. It’s not extreme by any means, but the body horror in this book is definitely more intense than your typical horror reader would be used to.

I would categorize Chlorine as “weird-girl-lit”. It’s a book about a weird girlie, written FOR the weird girlies (but even if you’re not a weird girlie, I still think you will definitely enjoy this story). Equal parts strange, beautiful, and heartbreaking, Chlorine is a novel that I have not been able to stop thinking about since I finished it.