Learning Not To Drown
I was swimming in murky water, the thin reeds pushing up through the waves tangling around my legs as I tried to swim to the other side of the lake. I heard toddlers and children crying my name and as I turned my neck, I saw the back of their heads barely poking out of the mud that encased their bodies. I had to get to them and yank them up out of the earth before it consumed them, for who knows what would have happened. This felt so real, my heart beating so hard, panic had settled in as I awoke one night after reading Learning Not to Drown. I was so caught up in the drama and in the experiences of Clare as she battled the skeleton in her families’ closet. Clare lives in the shadow of her older brother, the trouble maker. It was not just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time like her mother said but Clare knows no different. Clare’s other brother knows the truth and his temper and emotions show the true story. Clare has some memories and the ones that she has, she filters them. Bringing to the surface only the happy ones, letting the other memories sift down to the bottom, pretending that they never occurred. She feels like she is making a difference and she is trying: the letters to her brother in prison, driving her brother around town, and her knitting. As I peeled back the history of this family, the true colors that made up this household splattered across the pages and the skeleton came out of the closet, smiling and making himself known. How Clare did not discover the truth about her older brother was beyond me since she is going to school and she is around other adults but nevertheless, I loved how the author threw out the pieces a bit at a time and let Clare put her world together. She’s only trying to get through high school for then she can move away and create her own footprint, leaving the skeleton behind.
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