I just ordered a really intriguing standalone book that PW compares to the haunting and evocative work of Shirley Jackson. Released March 6, the book is entitled
The Drowning Girl.
PW gave the book a starred review and All Things Urban Fantasy rated it as a 5 bat (near perfect) read. I've copied both reviews below:
Publishers Weekly
Kiernan’s finely crafted stand-alone fantasy guides an artistic young woman through a maze of false memories and blurred realities. A diagnosis of schizophrenia is no surprise to India Morgan Phelps, aka Imp; her “family’s lunacy lines up tidy as boxcars” down the generations. Meds and psychiatry help keep her stable until she meets Eva Canning, who looks just like the woman in The Drowning Girl, an 1898 painting that has enthralled Imp since she was a child. Imp’s need to learn the truth about Eva brings on dreams and memories that can’t be real, and the obsession only gets worse when Eva abruptly disappears. Could Eva be the ghost of the woman who inspired the painter of The Drowning Girl, or a priestess whose worshippers died in a mass drowning in 1991? The chiding voice in Imp’s head urges her to get her stories straight, but how can she when reality keeps changing? Kiernan evokes the gripping and resonant work of Shirley Jackson in a haunting story that’s half a mad artist’s diary and half fairy tale. Agent: Merrilee Heifetz, Writers House. (Mar.)
Early 5bat! Review: The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R. Kiernan
 | Title: The Drowning Girl
Author: Caitlin R. Kiernan
Series: N/A
Cover Art: N/A
Genre: dark fantasy
Excerpt: No
Source: Publisher
Reviewed by: Julia - Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Roc Trade; March 6, 2012
- ISBN-10: 0451464168
- ISBN-13: 978-0451464163
Sexual Content:
References to sex, descriptions of oral sex and sex toys.
Rating: 
Near Perfect - Buy two copies: one for you and one for a friend. |
Description
India Morgan Phelps-Imp to her friends-is schizophrenic. She can no longer trust her own mind, because she is convinced that her memories have somehow betrayed her, forcing her to question her very identity.
Struggling with her perceptions of reality, Imp must uncover the truth about her encounters with a vicious siren, or a helpless wolf that cam to her as a feral girl, or neither of these things but something far, far stranger…
Review
By the purest definition of the rating, THE DROWNING GIRL is indisputably 5bats. A few chapters in, I was already reading passages aloud to friends. I already knew who would be receiving my own copy, budgeting for who I could send others. This had less to do with any enjoyment of the book than a sense of haunting that perfectly mirrors the main character’s own experiences. Does anyone else see what I see? Am I crazy, am I alone?
THE DROWNING GIRL introduces concepts and stories and images that are impossible to shake, and the thought of being able to discuss them with others is comforting. Even more so, the line between fantasy and reality is blurred more in this book than any other I’ve read. Which of the “facts” relayed by Imp are from our world, which from hers? While the fantasy elements of this story are arguably the product of Imp’s illness, the way she expresses her story is so beautifully crafted as to make me doubt even that. This charismatic but unreliable narrator, like any true artist, is able to convey the feeling of her own insanity without ever giving me the sense that I had unraveled it's mystery. As I read, trying to match dates and references to reality, I realized I was falling into Imp's own habits, desperately trying to impose order on fragmented and flawed mind. Like Russian dolls, stories and paintings and quotes nest themselves into the narrative in a way that is as enthralling as it is inscrutable.
Kiernan creates a new definition for “haunting”, while at the same time infecting me with the same. With so much discussion of different types of art (short stories, paintings, sculpture, content...), THE DROWNING GIRL delivers it’s own message with a slight of the hand that is devastating. What part of this book implanted this haunted feeling? What page, what paragraph, has left me so shaken? Equal parts INFINITE JEST and ghost story, though THE DROWNING GIRL was not a restful read, nor the type of entertainment I normally look for in fantasy, it is most certainly unforgettable. (See Early 5bat! Review: The Drowning Girl by Caitlin R....)
