Book Review: "Everything Under" by Daisy Johnson

I feel like I should have read this book upon its release because I cannot understand why in the world I had not heard of it before. I had not heard of Daisy Johnson or the fact that “Everything Under” was on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize in the year 2018. I do not understand how I have overlooked this novel and now, I would like to offer my apology for overlooking it to Daisy Johnson. As her debut, Daisy Johnson penned this stunning work and honestly, when I say stunning I am not using the word lightly. It is an incredible novel which resonates an almost Virginia Woolf-esque atmosphere with all of its madness, emotion and realism. Within all of this though, is the spectacle of fantasy which is peeled directly off the back of a Mary Shelley-like style - monstrous and raw, filled with passion, hatred and many layers down to its very depths (pun intended if you read the book as well). Honestly, I cannot say that there is a better book from the 2018 Man Booker Shortlist that did not win than this one. It is incredibly passionate and the atmosphere is absolutely stifling. I really do have to say it but seriously, I give it about ten to fifteen years and this book will be a modern classic of our generation. Thank you Daisy Johnson, for supplying us with your amazing talent for literature.

This book is about a woman called Gretchen who has not seen her mother in sixteen years and yet, when she does, there is something so horribly wrong. She can’t put her finger on it but when she recalls how she found her mother, she goes digging back into the past between the chapters “The Cottage”, “The Hunt” and “The River”. She digs up revelations she had never seen before, things she had overlooked and everything comes flowing back to her like the beat of the river beneath her feet. You get absolutely lost within each devastating blow to the heart she and her mother take in restoring this history. Gretchen, tirelessly discovering who she was, who she is and who she will become with an ending that is both easing and catastrophic. A terrifyingly good conclusion, it builds to the end scene with a slide that is almost expected but not hoped for.

The one thing I enjoyed about this book is the use of 2nd person. It is so hard to write an entire book in second person and I think that the last one I read of that nature was a few years ago by Jay McInerney entitled, “Bright Lights, Big City” and that was nowhere near as good as this novel in its use of that narrative. It really helped to understand the broken and often distant relationship even when the telephone call happens and they are reunited for the first time. As we go through each stage of memory, Daisy Johnson almost seems to invite the reader into the conversation as if she were writing a script or a memoir. It is a beautiful writing style and I hope to read more of it during her time in authorship.

But honestly, I really wish I did not wait as long as I did before I read the book. It is a work of absolute brilliance, a sweet but coarse blend between the realist, the spectacle and the gothic, the sublime nature of the writing is always overshadowed by this constant fear and impending doom which keeps the rhythm of the book moving along like the beat of a marching band playing a dirge.