It is very hard to talk about this book without talking about the ending, even if it was heavily foreshadowed right from the start, so be warned: this review has spoilers.
In Chlorine, obsession takes centrestage. The protagonist is a Chinese-American girl named Ren Yu/ äŗŗé±¼, literally āmermaid,ā which is a highly implausible and insensible name that no Chinese parent would ever give their child. A little heavy-handed on the symbolism, but I get it. Her friends call her Ren, her parents call her (å»)å®č“/ (silly) darling.
The story is told in retrospect as Ren recounts the events that led to her ascension into mermaid-hood at seventeen-years old. She tells us that since she was a little girl, she loved mermaids and longed to become one someday. She hates being on land and only feels happy and at home when inside water, which she admits was an addiction. This dream led to her becoming a star athlete, trained by a swim coach called Jim who was clearly a predator, but a careful one who never did anything that crossed the line. He gave special treatment to Ren because of her talent in the water and groomed her into becoming the best female swimmer in his team. He was also creepy, highkey abusive, and felt some kind of ownership over Ren. Thankfully, Jim doesnāt play that big a role in Renās life after she got to high school. In any case, Ren has much bigger fish to fry.
If you donāt like books with unlikeable protagonists, then this book is not for you. As a character, Ren does, says, and thinks some questionable and unsavoury things. From the very start, she takes on the role of the detached narrator who is above petty human concerns and is too good to care about other people, simply because she does not believe that she is a mere human. I think itās possible to read her character as someone suffering from extreme delusions and is therefore a thoroughly unreliable narrator. Renās life is purely studying and swimming taken to the extreme. When she suffers a concussion from slipping on ice, she lies to the doctor to return to the pool sooner, beginning an unsustainable reliance on painkillers bordering on drug abuse just to get through a school day. Ren also suffers debilitating period cramps, something I can truly relate to, but she just shoves a tampon in and forces herself to show up for swim practice and brutal training.
When Ren gets disqualified in a competition for having her legs apart, it sends her into a depressive spiral that clues us into how toxic her relationship with the sport has become. It is this incident that triggers her āascent,ā as she picks up sewing just to figure out how to sew her legs together to form the mermaid tail that she has always dreamed of having. Moments before a big race, with Harvard recruiters in the stands, she goes into a shower stall and slices her thighs open into flaps just to sew them together with black thread to create a scale-like effect. Then, she hops out into the pool auditorium thinking she can just hop into the water. Obviously, people around her screamed and ran away because of the sight and also the trail of blood behind her. She was restrained by her coach and friend, Cathy, and taken to the hospital immediately.
Her parents plan to have her stitches cut and her legs restored, so she asks Cathy to help her escape. Cathy comes through the morning before the surgery, helps her climb out of a window, and drives her off to the countryside where there is a creek. Ren tries to jump right in but Cathy begs her for an hour more, as a parting gift. Cathy unpacks the picnic she prepared; it is food that has sentimental value to the both of them as Cathy is nothing if thoughtful as ever. After they have eaten, Cathy goes into the creek to swim. Ren follows but chooses not to emerge for air, saying that she no longer has any use for oxygen, and swims away. We know that Cathy returns to the creek from time to time to throw love letters sealed in glass bottles, full of yearning, apologies, and self-blame.
What I find most unforgivable is how Ren treated Cathy, her only friend with whom she shared a reciprocated but unconsummated attraction. Cathy did nothing but be devoted to her, but she unfairly blamed Cathy for bad things that happened to her and also treated Cathy as an emotional punching bag. Ren knew that Cathy loved her and she did not hesitate to use that love to manipulate Cathy into doing things for her own self-interest. Granted, Cathy was a doormat and lovesick fool (and she continued to be one even after Renās departure, as evidenced by her letters), but Renās consuming obsession with becoming a mermaid caused her to inflict grievous hurt on the one and only person who has looked out for her. Saying things like, āMermaids arenāt supposed to care or feel shame/guiltā is really no excuse, and personally, I find Renās actions more selfish than sympathy-inducing.
I think that the ending was clever in that it allowed for more than one interpretation. If you choose to accept the magical realism or to read the first chapter as proof of Renās survival, then you can see it as Ren achieving her goal and truly becoming a mermaid. This is a happy ending because Ren finally achieves freedom. But if you choose to read her narrative as a deluded and unreliable one, then you can see it as Ren committing suicide the day she jumped into bottom of the creek with her legs sewn shut. There are clues strewn about. She didnāt feel pain because she was already so doped up on painkillers. She was exhibiting symptoms of bipolar disorder. She believed in fairytales from a childrenās book. She died because she had untreated mental illness, everyone around her enabled her unhealthy obsessions, and her delusions led to her drowning herself. This would then be a tragic ending. Overall, I quite liked this book and how gory the conclusion was, just like an old-fashioned fairytale. As I was reading I kept thinking that it would make such a good horror film adaptation, maybe an A24 one directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. The scene where Ren hops out with her fresh ātailā and all that blood while the entire auditorium screams and flees would be iconic and memorable. The film would be dark, sapphic, and gory. Very gothic. In my head, the cast would be Midori Francis for Ren and Sadie Sink for Cathy.