Book Review: Saltwater, Jessica Andrews

My rating: 5 stars

Book of 2022: 3

Lucy’s transition from working-class Sunderland to a London university is more overwhelming than she ever expected. As she works long shifts to make ends meet and navigates chaotic parties in East London warehouses and South Kensington mansions, she still feels like an outsider among her fellow students. When things come to a head, Lucy takes off to Ireland, piercing together family stories and trying to gain a sense of who she really is. 

Lyrical and boundary-breaking, Saltwater explores the complexities of mother-daughter relationships, the challenges of shifting class identity and the way that the strongest feelings of love can be the hardest to define. 

I bought this, just like every other book it seems, in Bath on my birthday book crawl & I’ve finally gotten around to reading it. Let me tell you, I was enthralled. 

This book is in a microfiction format, with beautifully lyrical writing in short bursts. We flit between Lucy’s life growing up in Sunderland, then moving to London for university, all returning to the present: her time in Ireland after her grandfather’s death. 

The writing style captivated me immediately, & I keep thinking of this book ever since I finished reading it. 

‘Fall into those molten afternoons, his hands all over your body. Spill towards me.’ (7)

The use of language is just exquisite, & it really reignited the passion for words I had whilst studying microfiction at university myself. 

We journey through Lucy’s life growing up close to her mother, then with the very brutally honest way teenage girls are objectified, objectify themselves, hide things from their mothers, whilst also screaming out for help at the same time. The way Andrews describes growing up is so beautifully tragic & I really really resonated with it. 

‘We look at pictures in magazines & watch music videos in ICT & someone says nothing tastes as good as skinny feels & we scoff at that but somehow it gets in.’ (145) 

It’s all so real. Every line of this book has meaning, has a reason for being there, & I basically re-wrote the whole thing out just in my favourite quotations. Andrews is a writer I can’t wait to read more from. 

The way art & literature captures Lucy’s heart & fills her with hope is a journey I really resonated with. There I was thinking I wouldn’t go to university, that I’d flunked it all by picking science & then realising how difficult it had become. There was English, there were words, there were stories & English teachers, & the magic of spinning a sentence into shape. 

‘Books offered me a gauzy version of reality & I stepped hungrily into it. I inhabited an in-between space of terraced streets & bridges laced with lines from novels & iconic films. Art layered another world over my real, perceived one & gave me a calm, quiet feeling inside.’ (199)  

Andrews emphatically describes moving somewhere new & exciting for university - to be inspired & have your eyes opened, mixed in with dread & fear & sadness. 

‘The very atoms of this place are burrowing their way under my skin, mingling with my neutrons & electrons & all of those other tiny, complicated things.’ (37)

We flit from London & young adult excitement, & Sunderland full of juvenile wonder, hope, & ambition. Lucy drinks & smokes & spends nights in strange bedrooms but always makes it to school

on time, desperate to escape. 

Her time at university with so much filling her head - worries at home, finding work, not having enough room to read, it all felt very real. Encapsulated in beautifully lyrical descriptions that I cannot emphasise enough. 

‘I was too full. I was brimming with the possibility of everything. Other people’s lives were carefully curated whereas I was a tangled knot of all of the people & places I had ever wanted to be. I was distracted by every bright thing & enamoured with every person I met who promised a more solid version of myself.’ (221)

Then we have Ireland, where Lucy feels a stillness, a sense of freedom. She is mourning the loss of her grandfather, but she also mourns her parent’s marriage, she mourns her childhood, she mourns her time at university. Leaving uni to move back to rural Staffordshire, in a time of isolation & no socialising, this part felt really special. There is a sense of belonging, a sense of self-discovery to these sections which are so breathtaking to read. 

‘There are unfulfilled desires, curdling inside of me. I have buried things; swallowed them down & turned off the light. I must learn how to listen to my body again. I must learn how to need, how to ask, how to want.’ (108) 

I really enjoyed living inside Lucy’s head. I’m never going to stop reading this book. It has highlighted a lot of me, & I think it will always remind me of this time in my life. A time of growth & finding myself & setting boundaries & finding new paths & exploring myself. 

‘I want to expand & leave traces of myself. I want evidence that I am existing.’ (227) 

This is a book about losing yourself, about finding yourself, about family, & friends who help us or hinder us on our paths. How all these lives interweave. How at the end of the day you are stuck with yourself. The actions you make. The paths you take. 

‘I am no longer ashamed of my own desire. I want rich & dirty things, I want dark things, like whiskey & blood-stains.’ (293) 

This is a book about listening. Listening to your own body, your own mind. Reading, loving, leaving, even. It’s about all of it. What you make of it all. This is a book about hope, I think, no matter if you lose it somewhere along the way. There is always hope, & wholeness. 

‘I might crack open again but now I know there is something whole beneath it all.’ (290) 

Saltwater, Jessica Andrews. Read it.