the half-drowned

by Trynne Delaney

'the half-drowned' is a vision of a future at the end of the world where what survives is the shapeshifting love of family both given and chosen. Drawing on the Afro-diasporic ancestral knowledge of water and the urgency of desire, Delaney builds a glittering, speculative world where community holds through grief, where we must choose to fend for ourselves while also caring for others. 'the half-drowned' is a genre-bending novella that crafts a polyphony of voices to speak to and through our lives and dreams in order to reach for the unspoken and unsayable and make it heard.

Genres: Fiction, Science Fiction

144 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2022

About the author

Trynne Delaney is a writer currently based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). They are the author of the half-drowned (winner of the QWF First Book Prize) and A House Unsettled. In their spare time they like to garden.

Reviews

[Méli · Rating 5 out of 5]

there is alot for ~130pages
need time to reflect

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

This is absolutely perfect for Jeff VanderMeer fans (I found it through his recommendation) and those of Rivers Solomon, as well.

Delaney packs a lot in this novella, and practically all of it is quietly compelling. There were moments were I felt adrift, but patience is a buoy that serves this story well, as revelations do come.

The world-building in this is also done really well. It’s sparse in a way but gave enough to allow me to really color this world’s story. It’s a world ravaged by the climate crisis and feels all too pertinent now.

Also, I just think the polyphony works pretty well, with only a few moments where I needed to reorient which character the narrator was referring to.

I will say though there are definitely some typos in this thing, but hopefully if this does well, it can get a reprint with those fixed.

I definitely want to see more from Delaney. I’d even love to see more from this world they’ve crafted.

[Crystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Madeleine Lachance · Rating 5 out of 5]

short, sweet, lovely and deep !

[Jordan Kjaer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was mind blowingly good; an instant favourite. Another review mentioned that lovers of Jeff VanderMeers work will enjoy this, and they couldn't be more right. Extremely uncanny and poetic.

[Prospero · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review: http://strangehorizons.com/non-fictio...

A story of love, loss, belonging and identity in a post-apocalyptic community of descendents of Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, and industrial clones. Also features aliens and a telepath.

[Juniperus · Rating 3 out of 5]

In my opinion, a good rule of thumb for experimental fiction is that the audience shouldn’t be questioning what happened, but why it happened. The Half-Drowned left me too busy trying to figure out what the concrete events of the narrative were to indulge in the rich and multilayered symbolism woven into it. The Half-Drowned was set at a post-apocalyptic commune set on the edge of the sea which reminded me of the Karen Russell short story “The Gondoliers”. The concept was intriguing, especially as a reference to Black Loyalist refugees in New Brunswick. I also like that Delaney let the world-building take a backseat to the character drama, between a pair of siblings and their respective partners. But the way the story is told is in this fractured style found in a lot of contemporary science fiction that I don’t find very interesting or clever. It’s hard to tell what’s going on because it’s almost intentionally obscure. The narrative shifts between first, second and third person (shared between three or more characters, I couldn’t tell) for no apparent reason. I also find it kind of unsubtle when science fiction authors use the world they construct as exemplary or aspirational, like when Delaney randomly uses therapy-speak like “to make and hold space for our communities to move through responsibility to each other.” Is this climate fiction or a yoga class?

[Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh what a fantastically evocative novella, taking place in short snatches of chapters in a post-apocalyptic world between Harbour and her brother LaVon, her lover Kara, and a mysterious alien intelligence on the sea floor that seems to have already driven LaVon mad.

Delaney adds in glimpses of a slightly deranged society: Rites of adulthood where you scavenge gold to make grillz and learn a shocking history; a disease that kills many each sick season; polyamory and stories of the rich who left for the sky when things got bad, and it seems eventually plunged back down: hence our alien.

We follow our characters as the converge toward something that seems final. The world around them feels mostly limited to just them, there's not much if a sense of the elders or other community members, other than one, which helps concentrate but isolate them more.

In the end, Delaney teases out a wonderful visual conclusion, and create a work that will stick with me I think for the rest of my life.

[Liza_lo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like the love child of Annihilation/Our Wives Under the Sea/Arboreality (also Jeff Vandermeer recommended it).

A post apocalyptic tale of fantasy and survival set in a seaside community that has survived the ravages of climate change. Delaney is clearly talented but this one wasn't for me.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn’t realize when I started this book what I was getting into. It is so inventive, haunting, and captivating. Wow.

[Sam Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel as though I’ve released the deepest breath after a long dive. What a beautiful weird novella! More words to come after some thinking.

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

engaged w/ here: https://5cense.com/24/1157.htm

[Chanel Chapters]

DNF

[marty silvestre · Rating 4 out of 5]

primera lectura… postcolonialisme i ecocritica molt be…

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

let me read this like 6 more times before I tell you my thoughts

[harmie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very experimental and extremely grand in its gesture, The Half-Drowned reads more like stage direction at times than fictional prose. Had this not been assigned for my class, I surely would not have gotten very far in this novella; characterizations are vague at best, the plot is painfully thin, and the content is so brimmed with poetic meaning and emphasis that it becomes difficult to sift through to find something concrete. Delaney's biggest achievement in this title is the world-building, which is painfully utilized to justify the author's characterizations. While I admire Delaney's intentions, the execution and follow-through of their work feels only half-realized.

[Jacob Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three short passages from the half-drowned:


*


Everyone in town is tired of fights between ex-lovers. Move on. We’re all we got. If you don’t like what you’ve got, find something else.


*


There is no possession in this universe. This last world within a world. Intensification after intensification. Destruction after destruction. Powerless violence after powerless violence. Empowered separation out of necessity.


*


Who’s the leader. Who follows? What follows? A trick question: we’re all the leader. We all follow.


*

[T]

"Backintheday..." shut the fuck up. Hard shit said tho